janecarnall

The Pieces: George

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:08:56 GMT

This is the final part of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).

Oh God. I just finished part 1 of "End Game". Okay. Tuesday for that. *insane giggles*

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game". Which, at the moment, I know what happens, have the first part written, have a clear idea of where it's going, and need to rough out the arc so I can tell you how many chapters. Yes I do. *more insane giggles*

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 7: George

Two cars drove off: Cowley barely heard them through the window of the lounge, but he saw their headlights moving across the ceiling. Unless Vecchio and Fraser had suddenly divorced, he was the last man left, and Gerard was probably looking forward to having him go, too.

Gerard was in the kitchen with Richard. Gerard looked up as Cowley appeared in the doorway: Richard sat still, his head bowed, not reacting. “Good night,” Cowley said directly. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”

“You got a fire to go to?” Gerard asked.

“What?” Cowley raised his eyebrows.

“If you’ve got time, sit down: I want to talk to you.”

Cowley shrugged. He moved round the table and sat down. “Well?” He glanced at Richard. “Shouldn’t he go upstairs?”

“Not right now,” Gerard said. He leaned backward in his chair, his hands resting on his stomach. “This afternoon, Willow solved the problem of how someone could have got into the Waverley townhouse the night of Helen Waverley’s murder.”

Cowley laughed, briefly but genuinely amused. “I thought you gave her till Friday?”

“Sure,” Gerard said: he wasn’t amused himself, and that was clear. “She and Ray got Richard out of his room, without my permission, and Willow asked him a nice simple question that it seems no cop or lawyer thought to ask before: who’d had his personal house keys? And one of the names Richard gave her was our pal Charles Nichols.” His smile could be cold as stone. “Seems I got it just exactly wrong. Not rescue: annihilation.”

Richard stirred. He had been sitting in a familiar position, hunched, head down, hands together in his lap, but he lifted his head, and looked at Gerard. He spoke without permission, but his voice was faint and wavering. “Why Helen? Why would Chuck kill Helen?”

“Assuming Willow’s theory is right,” Gerard said, “Doctor Nichols wanted you removed. You were out of the way whether you were dead or condemned for the murder of your wife. Even if you escaped conviction, you would certainly have had something else to think about than a few liver samples. If he did it, he did it for Provasic.”

Richard went on looking at Gerard. His face, Cowley had always thought, was rather an uninteresting one: blank and inexpressive, almost slack. Adam’s word, haeftling, never seemed more appropriate used to describe Richard. But he didn’t look slack-faced now, or frightened, exactly: he looked back at Gerard as if he were thinking.

“I didn’t kill Helen,” Richard said. He spoke in a level, controlled voice. “I fought with a one-armed man – when I came home. He had an artificial arm. Point of attachment, mid-humerus. Right arm. A mechanical arm with a cosmetic hand. No gimmicks. Nothing expensive. The kind of arm Cook County Hospital makes.” His voice shook. “I told the police. Five years ago. They didn’t believe me. No one did.” Richard swallowed, convulsively. “Sam – I thought you – ” His voice, once steady, rose and fell. “ – don’t believe me?”

“I’m a US marshal, not a judge or a jury,” Gerard said, much more evenly than Richard. “I’m an officer of the law. Willow and another of my employees between them uncovered evidence of a crime – falsification of medical evidence to get a pharmaceutical product past testing and into production. I can have that crime investigated and prosecuted, and maybe in the course of the criminal investigation they’ll turn up other crimes.” Gerard stood up. Richard’s head tilted up, continuing to watch him. “Like murdering Lady Helen Waverley,” Gerard said, “and getting her husband condemned to the collar. Maybe. But you aren’t a witness in this scenario, Richard. You know what you are?”

Cowley assumed it was a rhetorical question. So perhaps had Gerard. But Richard seemed to gather himself, and said, not quite as a whisper; “Evidence.”

“Yeah, that’s right, Richard. Evidence. I can hand you over to be processed by Commerce for evidence against Doctor Charles Nichols, and they will take you, and they will process you, and at the end of that process you will be dead. Is that clear to you?” Each word was hard-edged as blow, and Cowley saw Richard flinch.

But though he flinched, Richard didn’t look away, and his voice was surprisingly clear. “I don’t care.”

To Cowley’s further surprise, Gerard was the one to look away. Only for a moment – the expression on his face was fleeting, bitter humour – but when he looked back, his voice was sober. “Okay, Richard, on your feet. I’m going to take you upstairs, give you a sedative, and put you to bed. You’re going to sleep.”

Richard stood up, promptly, but swayed, as if he were going to sleep on his feet. Gerard caught his wrist. “I am not handing you over to Commerce tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got other things to do. I’m fucking busy this week. When I hand you over, it’s going to be with a full report and all the other evidence. Got it?”

“Yes, Sam.” Richard sounded beyond exhausted.

Gerard glanced back at Cowley. He didn’t say anything. Cowley nodded. He would stay until Gerard came back. There was a summary report to work on: he pulled his notebook out of his briefcase, opened it up, and got to work.

It didn’t take long before Cowley heard Gerard coming swiftly down the stairs. He didn’t come into the kitchen: another door opened and closed. He was in the lounge, collecting files or picking up his laptop.

But when he came into the kitchen, he wasn’t carrying anything. “You want to eat something?” Gerard asked abruptly.

About to say no, Cowley saw how stark and strained Gerard’s face was; “Thank you – I could do with a bite.”

“Sure,” Gerard said. He was standing at the freezer, taking out some of his homemade stew, when he said, out loud, out of the blue, “I forgot.”

“What?” Cowley stood up. “I’ll get it.”

“I forgot to make sure Richard got something to eat,” Gerard said. “Too late – he’s asleep now.” He put the box down on the counter, and closed the freezer door with a thud. “Sit down, George. Dana and Adam already went off to talk to Melissa, but I had the rest of my kids in here about Richard.”

“Indeed,” Cowley said.

“When Dana and Adam get back here tomorrow, they don’t get to leave the house till we’re clear they’re not going to get arrested.”

“Did you discuss that with either of them?”

“Not in detail,” Gerard said. He shot Cowley a look. He’d told Cowley earlier, almost in passing, that Dana wanted Melissa to try and get the decimation out on the Internet. “I didn’t ask you if they should do it at all.”

“I think it’s a good thing – always providing Commerce don’t track it back to us.”

“Yeah, what are the odds.”

Cowley sat down, slowly, digesting that. “You think they will.”

“If they don’t, it’s going to be because they’re really fucking stupid,” Gerard said. He was putting the box in the microwave, setting the timer, pressing the button, as he spoke. “Dana’s convinced her sister can get away with it. Maybe she can. We’ve never had to step in to protect Melissa’s network. But this is a very short trail.”

“Handing over Richard could distract them,” Cowley said.

Gerard turned and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d thought of that.” His voice was now absolutely without expression. “Dana wants me to give him to Senator McGarry.”

“You can’t do that,” Cowley said. He saw it at once, without explanation, but he followed it up. “It’s out of character – it isn’t something Deputy Marshal Gerard would do, sidestepping the usual channels – ”

“No,” Gerard agreed. He leaned on the edge of the table, looking at Cowley. “Commerce doesn’t doubt my loyalty. Richard’s a perfect test case for the Abolitionists, though. If he’s innocent, if he can be proved innocent, if he’s still alive at the end, there’s a clear legal case to set him free. Establish that it’s legal to free one slave, and all the abolitionists will shove their own cases through that gap. So if I give Richard up to Commerce, they’ll see to it that if he’s innocent, he’ll be dead before any legal case is made for freeing him.”

“Do you think he’s innocent?” Cowley asked.

Gerard shrugged. “Willow’s proved he could be. Which I didn’t think was possible. Remind me never to give her make-work again.” His mouth twitched in a smile that held no humour. “But whether or not he really is … he’s already served a life sentence. I meant to put him on a plane and get him out of here, in six months. I could still do that. We got maybe four to go, just add one more.” He looked down at his hands on the table, and straightened up, turning back to the counter, not looking at Cowley. “Talk to me, George. You’ve been running the numbers all day. What does it look like to you?”

“That we should be making four to eight arrests next week,” Cowley said. “But those are based on old data.”

“How do you mean?” Gerard didn’t turn, but he was interested,

“Commerce never killed two thousand slaves before. Not all at once, in public. If Melissa can get this onto the Internet, especially if the pictures are hosted by servers outside USNA, there will be a public debate about slavery. Everything could change.”

Gerard didn’t turn. “We can’t afford to think like that,” he said.

“Why else did you agree to let Dana leak the news?”

“Sure,” Gerard said.His voice was flat. “But we always have to plan as if nothing will change. What arrests will we tell them to make next week?”
Cowley had three groups of arrests in mind: from past experience, by tomorrow one group should become clear to him. They had always to provide Commerce with some people who were actually guilty, some who could give up minor networks under interrogation. Which people they chose, the guilty and the innocent and the informed, which networks would be sabotaged, had become a complex pattern – a pattern that they could not afford to look like a pattern.

While Cowley was in the middle of outlining the third group, Gerard put bowls of stew and a plate of bread down on the table. Given practice, Cowley could finish briefing Gerard while eating Gerard’s idea of beef stew, which had more chiles in it than Cowley felt a decent cow needed.

“I told Giles he should marry Willow,” Gerard said, apparently disconnected, once Cowley had finished.

“Oh, indeed?”

Gerard smiled, close-mouthed. “I told him I’d marry you for your passport, not romance. I think he took my point.”

Cowley lifted his eyebrows, managing – he felt – to look more amused than disconcerted. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t say I’m complimented.”

“I’m not leaving here, if it comes to that,” Gerard said, with a dry twist to his voice. “But that’s my orders for you and Giles: I want all three of you safe out. You’d none of you be much use, except for what you know, and what you know is as much use outside as it is here.” He paused. “You got that, George? I don’t want you telling me later you misunderstood me.”

“I understand you,” Cowley said, after a moment. “I’ll see the pair of them safe out of here, and go with them.”

Gerard nodded. “If Commerce figure out tomorrow, right away, Dana leaked to Melissa, they could come down on us hard. I told Giles to stay clear, him and Willow both. I didn’t tell them why. Anyway, they could both use a break.”

“That’s certainly true.”

“And I’ll need to get a new canary,” Gerard added. “One way or another, I won’t have Richard after next week.”

Cowley sat still. He shook his head, briefly. He wanted to ask Didn’t you cause enough trouble for yourself? There was still that brutal practicality to it: but the look on Gerard’s face wasn’t brutal, just withdrawn: not cruel but cold.

“Try honesty, next time,” he said, with sarcasm, but meaning it. “They could barely stand your having a slave when they thought it was just you wanted Richard. If you get rid of Richard and right away you buy someone else, I don’t think they’re going to forgive you at all.”

Gerard nodded. He had finished eating. He put his hands together, and rested his chin on top of them. “I figured they’d get over it once Richard gave up fighting me, but I can’t say he ever did.”

“Did you really expect him to?”

Gerard shrugged. “Why not? I meant him to have a decent enough kind of life here, as far as that’s possible. He just had to relax and get comfortable.”

“You’re a scary kind of bastard,” Cowley said finally, after wondering if he would get away with it: but Gerard only raised his head from his hands and looked at Cowley as if wondering. “You know that?”

“I saw Richard in the dorms at the arena,” Gerard said, without answering. “I was doing a tour with a bunch of the governor’s people. That was two years ago. I saw him sitting on one of the bunks, watching us pass through – I don’t think he saw us, all he saw was his jailers. He looked…” Gerard’s voice trailed off. After a moment, without seeming to realise there had been a gap, he said “Fearless.”

“Nobody’s that fearless,” Cowley said.

Gerard’s smile was a dry, cold grimace. “Richard is.” The expression on his face was naked: Cowley looked away.

“God save us,” he muttered.

“Too late,” Gerard said.

End

The final part of The Games, “End Game”, begins tomorrow...

The Pieces: Giles

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:28:42 GMT

This is part 5 of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

I apologise for the long delay! Part of this was a bit of a discussion I had with Poisontaster (which worked out all right in the end, but we hadn't ever actually talked about my writing FPF in the Keptverse: cleared the air/clarified things, basically, this is definitely not-official not-supported fanfic, but it's cool.) But that was last week. Most of the delay was I've had this hideously awful cold and it's eaten my brain and I was fighting to get part 6 and part 7 written and get at least 300 words into "End Game" before I posted part 6. But I did and I have and here you are. I am so sorry.

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is being written! Yay.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 6 - Giles

Giles waited outside each cell. Benton went into each one alone. They would deliver their joint report by the end of the day, but Benton knew as well as Giles that the slaves were gone. They were runaways: Commerce would take their contracts back, mark them in the face, and probably resell them for factory work, given their youth. Dana would report them dead: Sam would send them, boxed and drugged, on a foreign delivery plane from this or another state.

Why would I mind?

Benton played a good guy better than anyone Giles knew. The girls had all been locked up alone now for 72 hours, wearing the same clothes they arrived in, given only minimal food and water. Giles was their nightmare. Benton could be their best friend.

Why indeed?

Two girls who had no good set of futures ahead of them. The slaves were at least going to a country where slavery was illegal: even if the other girls were sent home, it would be because Gerard saw a use for them.

In the kitchen, Willow was hunched over her laptop at one end of the table, and Ray at the other. Willow looked up as Giles came in and smiled.

Ray half-glanced up, saw them, and turned his attention back to his computer. Benton went to stand behind him: Ray moved as if to cover the screen, and then sat back in his chair. He looked angry. He didn’t say anything.

“Where is Sam?”

Ray lifted his chin. “I should know?”

“Probably still in the office,” Willow said.

“We need to make our report, but then we can go home,” Giles said.

“I finished doing the arrest reports,” Ray said. He twisted to look up at Benton. He sounded challenging.

“Of course,” said Benton.

Willow glanced down the table at Ray, visibly worried, but said to Giles, “An hour?”

“We could collect a pizza from Giordano’s on the way home.”

“Could we have a stuffed crust with cheese and sausage?” Willow asked, as brightly as if she didn’t still have shadows under her eyes.

Ray and Benton were still looking at each other. They did not appear to be about to kiss and make up any time soon. Giles glanced away. “If we can pre-order,” he said, and picked up his laptop. “Benton, we should go sort this out with Sam.”

“Okay,” Gerard said. “Benton, go tell George. He’s running the numbers tonight, he’ll tell me tomorrow. Then go home. You and Ray. You need a rest. Tell Ray to bring doughnuts tomorrow, okay?”

“Yes, Sam.” Benton paused a moment, on his feet, looking at Sam: Giles had the oddest feeling he would have said something, if Giles had not been there, and for a moment he wondered if he should offer to excuse himself. “I’ll tell Ray. Doughnuts. Take care of Willow, Giles.” He was gone.

“How’s the girl?” Gerard asked.

For a moment, Giles thought Gerard meant one of the prisoners – He literally could not think which one of the four Gerard was asking after. Then he understood, just as Gerard corrected himself: “How’s Willow doing?”

“She’s – ” Giles hesitated. Not throwing up. Looking better. Investigating high-level security systems. Cracking top-security databases. “Fine, I suppose.”

“We’ll know who our next pattern of arrests should target by Friday. I wouldn’t talk to her about the work you’ve been doing this week.”

“When are the girls leaving here?” Giles asked.

There was a pause: a little longer than a beat. “You don’t need to know that,” Gerard said.

“Are you planning to send us away?”

Gerard didn’t move for half a minute. He was staring at Giles, and the lines on his face looked graven deeply in. He was older than Giles – how much older, Giles had never considered. He stood up and turned to look out of the window: it was dark outside, the distant city lights the only illumination, and it seemed as if he was looking at his own reflection. He put his hand up on the glass, and stood there for another minute, without speaking.

“I don’t want to lose either of you,” Gerard said finally. “You do good work.” He came back to the desk and stood beside it, looking down at Giles. “I don’t know what the hell you did before this, but you are a damn fine interrogator. And Willow – kid’s a fucking genius. I don’t want either of you messed up by this. I want you both to go home. Don’t come in tomorrow. Either of you.”

“Wait,” Giles said. “What are you planning to do tomorrow?”

“What the hell do you think?” There was a familiar, amused snap in Gerard’s voice.

“Get rid of Richard,” Giles said.

“The dangerous dildo?” Gerard really was amused. “No. Richard’s staying here. I don’t want either of you here tomorrow. It’s got nothing to do with Richard, it’s got nothing to do with anything I’m planning to do. Interrogating these four kids, it’s been rough on you. Take a day. Stay with Willow. Call in on Thursday.”

“Tomorrow’s the day Adam thinks they’ll start – the decimation.”

Gerard nodded. “It is.”

“You know that for sure?”

“No,” Gerard said. “But I think Adam’s right. Giles, this is an order: you and Willow are not coming in to work tomorrow. Willow can take her laptop home, in case she wants to crack any secure databases or whatever it is she does to relax. Go.”

Giles stood up. Gerard was moving past him to the door. “Come on,” he said. “I want to make sure you and Willow are out of here. You know, Giles, you should marry that girl.”

That came out of nowhere. Giles pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I think you misunderstand the circumstances,” he said, stiffly.

“I do not. You’re still a British citizen.”

“The UK has closed its borders – ”

“If what we’re doing works, that’s not going to matter. I’m talking passports, not romance. I’d marry George for his passport, if he’d have me.” Gerard turned his head and Giles saw that he was smiling, the close-lipped cold smile that left no clue if this was a joke or not. But he sounded serious.

If what we’re doing works? Giles hadn’t thought about it. He was too used, he supposed, to lurching from disaster to disaster, always averted, never coming to an end. He thought about that now, about being home, The familiar grey tang of the London streets, the stony view from the British Library – would he even be able to get his old job back? The four years in California, this year in Chicago – would he be able to look back on these years and think They were hell – past tense? Going home to a country where slavery had been abolished by Act of Parliament two centuries ago, where American tourists were no longer allowed to parade with their leashed slaves through the city as if it belonged to them –

If what we’re doing works, they still won’t. Giles followed Gerard through the door into the other side of the house, still thinking about that: he had not, at any time, thought about their success in concrete terms.

He wondered if Willow had. If he should ask her. If he should tell her what Gerard said.

“What the hell?” Gerard said, surprised and cold.

It was a moment before Giles realised why Richard’s presence at the kitchen table would surprise Gerard. Willow was sitting at the table in the chair opposite Richard’s; she had the look on her face of peaceful, slightly smug satisfaction, that must have infuriated most of her schoolteachers: Willow had not been a popular child at Sunnydale High, either with the students or the staff.

Ray had been sitting at the other end of the table: he was getting to his feet as Gerard came in. He said “I got Richard out of the cell, Sam. Will told me she had a couple of questions to ask him.”

Benton, at his side, said nothing. But he looked decidedly more peaceful than he had even half an hour ago.

Gerard went round the table and bent down, leaning one hand next to Willow’s laptop. He looked across the table at Richard, and Giles saw him frown. Richard was sitting with his hands on the table in front of him, and there was something odd about how he was sitting: his head and his shoulders were up.

“What part of ‘ask me before you interrogate Richard’ wasn’t clear?” Gerard asked, and glanced at Ray.

“It wasn’t an interrogation,” Willow said. She was smiling more widely now. “I just had to ask Richard one question. I wanted the names of everyone he ever leant his personal house keys to. Here’s the list.”

Giles bent his head to look at the screen. Curious now, Giles moved away from the door. He wanted to see Richard’s face.

“See?” Willow said, practically crowing. “The Waverley town house had the same security system as we have here, only the civilian version. It’s different levels with different keys in the civilian version, if you’ve got the right set of house keys the access code isn’t sixteen digits, it’s only four, anyone could memorise four, and look who’s on the list!”

Gerard was looking at Richard. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I see.”

Richard’s eyes held more hope than Giles felt one person should have been able to bear. Giles almost looked away.

“The night Lady Helen Waverley was murdered,” Willow said. “There was no forced entry, but there wouldn’t have been – Doctor Kimble leant him his car, you see, Sam, it was there in the police evidence all along, Kimble had house keys on his car key fob, the slaves were all locked in their quarters for the night before Lady Helen left for the reception they were going to, and Doctor Nichols just let the one-armed man in with a borrowed set of keys!”

Richard’s head jerked back. His hands spread out on the table. His mouth opened, though no words came out. There was no more hope in his eyes. Giles did look away, for a moment, as if from a car smash, and then, reluctantly, looked back again.

“Speculation,” Gerard said. He circled the table, as if leisurely, and put his hand on the back of Richard’s neck.

“No,” Willow said. Giles thought he should stop her, and also that it was too late: like trying to stop an avalanche with a word. “Doctor Nichols is the only name on the list who had access to the house keys, who’d been visiting them for years and could easily have got the code, who falsified the Provasic data, he was the patentholder, he went to the same tennis club, he probably killed Doctor Lentz, too – ”

“Lentz is dead?” Richard’s voice was hoarse and wavery. His head tilted, as if he were trying to squint up at Gerard and still keep an eye on Willow. “Chuck didn’t kill Helen… the man I fought wasn’t Chuck.”

“The one-armed man,” said Benton. His hand, Giles saw, was resting on Ray’s shoulder. “Nichols wanted you dead because you knew RDU90 didn’t work, Doctor Kimble.”

“Lentz was the patentholder,” Richard said. His voice was dazed. “Lentz. I warned Chuck about Lentz… last week?”

“Last Thursday,” Gerard said. His hand was still resting on the back of Richard’s neck. “I got an e-mail from Doctor Nichols about half an hour, maybe less, after you finished talking to him. He wanted to buy you. I figured it was a rescue bid. I told him no.”

Richard was staring at Gerard, upward and sideways. “Chuck couldn’t buy me. I didn’t ask him to.”

“He runs a test lab at the hospital,” Gerard said. The tone of his voice was quiet, almost intimate. “I figured he’d buy you for the lab, then divert you into other service.”

“No,” Richard said. He sounded, briefly, confident. “He couldn’t do that. We have all sorts of safeguards in place at Chicago Memorial, ever since Doctor Wilson used to buy ex-bodyslaves with hospital funds, and claim they were for chemotherapy testing…” His voice trailed off, no longer confident. He was shaking, visibly. “…so now when test slaves get bought, they go directly to the Final lab with the cages, there isn’t any divert.”

“I could show you the e-mail,” Gerard said. “Doctor Nichols tried to buy you, for the lab.”

“No,” Richard said. But it wasn’t a denial. It was only a last, lonely protest. He shuddered with his whole body, and bent his head, not looking at any of them.

“Ray,” Gerard said. “You brought Richard down here without asking me… why?”

“Hell,” Ray said. “That’s our girl, that’s Willow – she said she didn’t think Richard was guilty.” He shifted his feet, and his hands moved, as if nervously, but his eyes stayed steady. “If he didn’t do it, he didn’t deserve what we were doing to him. You know that, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Gerard said, after a moment. “I know it.” He took his hand away from the back of Richard’s neck, but stood for a moment staring down at Richard’s face half-turned to his. When he looked back at them, his expression was still unreadable. “I know it. Richard, don’t move. Ray, Benton, get out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight. Bring doughnuts. Giles, you heard what I said upstairs. You and Willow. Go.”

There was a pause. Giles didn’t move because he couldn’t: it was too abrupt, too strange. Richard is mine. Richard’s staying here.

“Vattene, bambini,” Gerard said.

They sat on the daybed together, the pizza box between them, the TV on: the news was almost comforting, almost meaningless.

“We don’t have to go into work tomorrow,” Giles told Willow.

Willow didn’t look smug any more. She glanced up at Giles, and nodded, and picked up another piece of pizza, stuffing it into her mouth as if it provided a bulwark against tears.

“I wondered,” Giles said, trying to sound as impersonal as he could, “if you’d consider getting British citizenship with me?”

Willow finished that slice of pizza. “We just went,” she said, after a moment. “We didn’t stop to argue with Sam. Or ask him any questions.”

“No,” Giles agreed.

“Do you think Richard’s going to be there when we come back on Friday?”

“Yes,” Giles said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.”

Willow gave him a look. Giles picked up another piece of pizza, for something to do with his hands, and said, more emphatically, “Yes, I’m sure of it. Now, what about British citizenship?”

“What?”

“I looked it up. I can give you British citizenship. There’s a one-day waiting period and the licence costs thirty dollars, cash. Shall we?”

It would be something to think about tomorrow that didn’t touch on decimation.

tbc – tomorrow

The Pieces: Dana

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:48:54 GMT

This is part 3 of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2). Hooray, I have parts 4 and 5 also written, which will be posted Thursday and Friday, and hopefully I can get 6 and 7 written by the weekend.

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 3: Dana

Dana visited Melissa and her partner and their children every Sunday. She always had – Sunday afternoons were always time for family visits – and Gerard had agreed it would look more suspicious to discontinue. By agreement, Melissa didn’t talk about her friendship network, and Dana didn’t talk about what she was supposed to do at work.

By next Sunday, it would all be over. Even if they talked about it.

“Sam, can I talk to you?”

Gerard looked up from his computer screen. He shrugged, wordlessly, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. After a couple of minutes, his fingers stopped moving on the keyboard: he tapped twice, probably shutting a file down or saving it, and turned his own chair a little, leaning back and folding his hands across his stomach. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and nor did Dana, though she thought that she had what she wanted to say summarised.

“Coffee?” Sam asked, after a moment. If she said yes, that would put off the question for at least fifteen minutes.

Dana met Sam’s eyes and kept her voice completely level. “Adam still thinks Devlin-Macgregor will begin decimation tomorrow, or at best the day after. He thinks it will take them three days to finish them all off. I want to tell Melissa about it – about Commerce ordering a decimation at that site, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Gerard was frowning. He grinned, a distortion of his face. “That’s all?”

“Yes, Sam.” Dana kept her eyes fixed on Sam’s face. “I think Melissa may know someone who works there. Maybe more than one. They do have free employees.” She thought Melissa might even know some of the slaves of the company’s free employees, but she wouldn’t say that to Gerard.

“Anyone who tried to stop it would get killed, if they were lucky. Get turned over to Commerce, if not.”

“Not stop it,” Dana said. She had been thinking of this, only of this, for nearly twenty-four hours. “Record it. Witness it. Melissa says – people think about personal slaves first, factory slaves last. But two thousand people - if there were photos of that circulating on the Internet – If people had to see it – ”

“You’re hopeful,” Gerard said, and laughed – an abrupt, entirely humourless crack of sound.

“This is legal, what they’re doing,” Dana said. She made it half a question, by her tone, and Gerard nodded.

“Decimation is legal with Commerce approval. But if you’re thinking that means they think they’ve got nothing to hide, this is Commerce, they always have stuff to hide. And Devlin-MacGregor aren’t exactly the most wide-open company on earth.”

“Yes. The only people meant to know about this while it’s happening are their slaves. I think my sister could change that.”

Gerard stood up, and turned his back on her. He was standing by the window. He put his hand up against the glass, and seemed to be leaning against the window, looking out at something. Not looking at her. “If Commerce found out one of my kids had leaked their plans to the abolitionists, they’d want me to take action. And I couldn’t tell them I’d approved it. Even if I had.”

He turned around. Against the light from the window, his face was hard to see. “Do you understand what that means, Dana?”

“You’d send me out on the next foreign delivery,” Dana told him. She had thought about this.

“If I could,” Gerard said. His voice was expressionless. “If I couldn’t – ” The light outlined him, made him difficult to look at. He had stopped speaking mid-sentence. When he went on, his voice had changed, become colder. “You know what Commerce would do to you. And Melissa.”

“Melissa wouldn’t have to do anything illegal.”

“Do you imagine that would stop Commerce?” Gerard’s shadow against the window shook his head slowly. “Do you really think they couldn’t take Melissa, if they wanted to?”

Dana had more confidence in Melissa’s ability to position herself just on the right side of the law, and pull strings with the politicians and pundits who read her blog, but Melissa wouldn’t have wanted her to talk about that to Gerard. Melissa got emails directly from the senior Senator for Illinois, who passed as a moderate Laborite.

“I think Melissa can get away with it. Even if Commerce finds out it was her.”

Gerard sat down behind his desk again, his face impassive. “But you can’t,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “You would be guilty of leaking secure information. Commerce would want you questioned. If you had gone behind my back and leaked information that I considered a serious threat to our security, the very best you could hope for would be that I would be angry enough to kill you right away.” Gerard’s voice was without emotion, as neutral and tired as his face. “And that’s what I would have to tell Commerce I had done. You would no longer exist.” He stopped, and considered Dana in silence for what felt like a long time. “That isn’t a risk I find acceptable, Dana.”

“But it’s my risk,” Dana said.

“To accomplish what?” Gerard shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Dana said, after a moment. She had a complex array of reasons, and had meant to go through them all – from the value of direct images to convey a message, to the relatively small risk to her of being discovered by Commerce. She didn’t think those reasons would impress Gerard now. “But if we don’t do anything, those two thousand people are dying for nothing. At least we can try to have them remembered. If the abolitionists find out someone carried out the punishment, maybe they can get the law taken off the books. If we do something. If we don’t do anything, nothing happens. Except two thousand people get killed.”

Gerard shrugged. Again, he sat still in silence, looking at Dana. Finally, he said “Okay.”

“You’re going to let me do it?”

“No,” Gerard said. “I’m going to think about it.”

“I need to tell Melissa tonight – if I’m going to.”

“I’ll give you my decision before you leave tonight.” After a beat, Gerard added “I won’t keep you here so late you don’t get to leave. Now get out of here.”

Willow was in the clinic when Dana got back to it. She was carrying her notebook and her laptop, and she looked appalling: white and wrung out. Better than last night.

“How are you?” Dana asked.

“I’m fine,” Willow said. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Dana nodded. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“I need to set up my notebook,” Willow said.

“For this?” Dana sat down. She couldn’t tell Willow about Melissa and her networks: that was on a need to know basis. She certainly couldn’t tell Willow what she and Gerard had talked about: if Gerard said no, Dana wasn’t sure what she was going to do. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to talk to me about?”

“Richard,” Willow said, unexpectedly. “Gerard asked me to find out why people want to buy him, and I interrogated him this morning – ”

“You what?” Dana stared, it hardly seemed to sink in. “You interrogated Richard? Does Gerard know? What – Willow, what did you do?”

“Gerard asked me to,” Willow said. She looked bewildered. “I just asked him questions.”

“Where?”

“In the kitchen. Ray was there. Only s-some of the things Richard said – I wanted to set up the notebook, I’ve got a recording and a transcript – Dana, what’s wrong?”

Dana laughed. It wasn’t funny. “It’s okay. What do you want to show me?”

The transcript was simply of conversation – questions and answers, though Willow had begun with an array of all the textbook questions for starting an interrogation.

“Who is Sykes?” Dana asked, reading the transcript.

“There’s a Frederick Sykes on the amputees list,” Willow said. “Richard called him on Thursday and looked him up on Facebook. He’s on the Chicago network. He doesn’t have any connection with Chicago Memorial or Cook County – he doesn’t list his employer but he’s not on the hospital websites. Richard tried to page a Doctor Ferguson on Sunday, but he thinks he was trying to page a Doctor Lentz. I looked up the liver samples on the page Richard was looking at Wednesday, and they were all signed in by Dr A. Lentz, but he isn’t on the hospital website as a current employee. Richard says there’s something wrong with the liver samples, but I don’t see anything wrong with them. Except a lot of them were signed in on the same day, but that was months after Richard was arrested,” Willow added.

“What are you asking me?”

“Can you see what Richard thought was wrong with the liver samples?”

Dana glanced at the clock on the notebook screen. “What do you think this has to do with buying Richard?”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. But look, Dana, Richard says he talked to Chuck Nichols on Thursday about Lentz and Sykes and these samples. And right after that, Doctor Nichols tried to buy Richard. RDU90 means a drug that was being tested, doesn’t it?” Willow hardly waited for Dana’s nod. “Maybe this was a research project that Lentz and Richard were working on and Nichols wanted to buy Richard to keep on with the project? And then when he couldn’t get Sam to sell, he asked Devlin-Macgregor to help? They funded the research for RDU90.” She came to a halt and looked at Dana. “Or, you know… maybe Richard’s just crazy. I mean, he is crazy, Sam warned me, but I mean really crazy, seeing something wrong when there’s nothing to do with these samples at all. I couldn’t see anything.”

Dana looked at the clock again. “Okay,” she said finally. “If I can figure it out in half an hour. If I can’t, I’ve got too much to do. I want to leave on time today. Can you hack me on to their website? It’ll save time.”

“Sure.” Willow opened up her laptop. “I’ll find Doctor Lentz.”

The samples were standard, taken from patients who had been given RDU90. Often recorded as having been taken by a surgeon, usually Doctor R. D. Kimble, during an operation. Signed into the database by a Doctor A. Lentz. All the liver samples were healthy. Willow was right that a whole lot of them had been signed into the database on one day, far too many for good practice, but Lentz had probably been the kind of doctor who put off his routine admnistrative work and did it in one rush. There were too many samples to look at all of them: Dana picked out a dozen at random and conscientiously looked at each one at the highest possible magnification. Richard last Thursday hadn’t had any better access.

There was nothing to see. Dana pulled up two dozen more, and looked at them more rapidly, trying to see something that Richard could have spotted, even something completely insane.

Willow made a noise of disappointment. “I found Lentz. He’s dead.”

“Oh,” Dana said. She was disappointed herself: she would have liked to send Willow away with more help than just a negative. Sam evidently wanted Willow to have an easy job to do this week, and Dana agreed she needed one. “How did he die?”

“Vehicular homicide,” Willow said, with just a ghost of her juvenile amusement in the law enforcement jargon. “Over four years ago.”

Dana looked at the date of the sample she was examining, and her heart missed a beat.

“What date?” she asked.

“August first,” Willow said.

“That’s the date on these samples,” Dana said. “And Willow… I think I know what Richard saw. These are all samples of a healthy liver. The same healthy liver.” She pulled up four of them, side by side. Seen like this, even at low magnification, it was so clear she couldn’t believe she’d missed it before.

“What happened to RDU90? What name was it patented under? What time of day did Lentz get hit by the car?”

Willow was looking at the screen. “The report doesn’t say,” she said. “He was walking to his regular tennis match. Richard thinks Lentz falsified his data. But he didn’t, did he?”

Dana waved that aside. “He may have. But someone else did, too.”

“Are all of those really from the same liver?”

“Yes,” Dana said. “That’s what Richard must have seen – what he told Doctor Nichols. Willow, can you find out what happened to RDU90 without anyone knowing you were looking?”

“Of course,” Willow said. She looked briefly very happy and pleased with herself, and Dana thought she deserved it. It took her about five minutes.

“It went up for sale as Provasic,” Willow said finally. “Reduces arterial plaque. But a new version was approved by the FDA last year, because…” She stopped. “The original patent turned out to cause liver damage in some elderly patients. Dana, the only name that’s the same on the original patent and the new patent is Doctor Charles Nichols.”

tbc tomorrow

The Pieces: Ray

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:52:14 GMT

This is part 2 of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1). Part 3 is written and will be posted when I'm done with Part 4....

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 2: Ray

Ray

It was odd how everything could still look the same. Even after they knew. The Devlin-MacGregor site was out on the east side. People died there every day, in the ordinary way of business, he and Benny had more cause to know than most.

Ray counted faces for a while. But two thousand. He could not get up that far. How were they planning to dispose of the bodies? The practical problems made him feel sick; counting faces gave him a headache at the back of his skull that no aspirin would touch. He hardly wanted to let go of Benny.

This morning, Giles was interrogating the four girls – the two runaways, the two silly rich kids who'd helped them. Adam was working with George on the numbers for the next set of arrests. Dana was over in the clinic working up a death report for each subject. Benton was assigned to Giles, and Ray to do the arrest records – in the kitchen, where Willow was going to be interrogating ... “Richard?”

“I had a second offer for him,” Sam said.

Once Sam had explained what he wanted, though it still sounded like a way to give Willow a few days off without admitting that she needed it, Ray mostly felt guilty that he was getting a light day in the kitchen catching up with routine paperwork while Benny got to stand in silence looking menacing as Giles got some scared kids to talk.

“Another thing,” Sam said. “Richard needs maintenance access to some kind of exercise routine. Would you two be okay, locking down the armoury, escorting him there and back for supervised exercise? It's okay to say no,” he added – which was the nearest Sam would ever come to admitting he was asking a personal favour.

Benny glanced at Ray: his face was handsomely unreadable, but Ray knew damn well what he'd think – and what he'd say, later – if Ray said no. Save time to give in now. “Sure, okay, Sam. If you're sure about putting him next to the armoury,” he added as a dig.

Sam grimaced. “If it's all locked down before Richard gets into the gym, and he can't get anywhere on the other side but the gym, it should all be fine. I'll work out a schedule. Thanks,” he added, in a constrained voice.

Ray shrugged, uncomfortable. “Richard’s in the holiding cell?”

“Yes, he is. Willow’s in the kitchen.” Sam turned away. “You need me, I’ll be working in the office.”

He and Benny stood and looked at each other. I don’t want to let go of you. As if in answer, if Ray had said it out loud, Benny put his hand on Ray’s shoulder. He gripped briefly, before his arm fell to his side again. “I’ll see you at lunchtime, Ray.”

They turned away from each other at the same time; Ray went into the kitchen, hearing Benny walk away down the hall. Ray still felt like shit. But Willow looked as if she had been flattened out. She was sitting at the other side of the kitchen table, notebook in front of her, looking more like a piece of scrumpled paper than a federal interrogator.

Are you all right? Ray thought of asking, and thought better of it. Devlin-Macgregor would begin the slaughter of two thousand people tomorrow because of a report Willow wrote, of course she wasn’t all right.

“I’ll go get Richard,” Ray said. “You okay to start when we get back?”

Willow nodded.

Richard didn't look much better than Willow did, actually, but Ray didn't give a damn about him. It was odd: Richard had never looked anything but completely subdued to Ray, a wife-killer beaten down to his knees, and while Ray accepted as gospel the report George had put together tracking Richard’s exploits with other people’s phones and laptops, it was damn near impossible to reconcile that with the obedient, cooperative ex-arena slave.

Richard got to his feet obediently, and walked down the stairs ahead of Ray. In the kitchen, Ray put Richard in the chair that had its back to the door, and sat down in the chair at the far end, nearest the door to the utility room. He put his own laptop on the table, opened it up, and began the routine work on the arrest records, half his attention on Willow and Richard.

Although Willow was listed as an interrogator, she'd never to Ray's knowledge actually done an interrogation before. And this was taking place across a kitchen table, and Willow's voice sounded at times more shaky than Richard's. But Willow's first groundwork questions were textbook.

Literally. “Favourite colour?” Willow asked.

Ray glanced up, interested to see how Richard would react. He was looking at Willow with an expression that said, clear as print, Oh you're kidding me.

“Blue,” Richard said.

“Okay,” Willow said. She looked disconcerted, but Ray supposed he wasn't here to protect Willow from how Richard might look at her. “Whose login did you use at the Chicago Hope website?”

“Kath's,” Richard said.

Willow hardly glanced down at her notes. “That would be Doctor Kathy Wahlund. How did you get her password?”

“Kathy cycles through three or four passwords. She always has. I got the password she was using last week on the third try.”

“Which laptop were you using when you tried the passwords that didn't work?”

“Yours, I think,” Richard said. He sounded almost easy with all this, but there was the tell-tale pause between one word and the next, an odd distancing – Benny had first pointed it out to Ray, but it was unmistakable once he'd heard it.

“What did you do when you got access to Chicago Hope?”

“I used Kath's e-mail to set up a guest account for Cooks.” Richard paused. “That's Cook County Hospital. I checked her schedule. I did it when she was teaching a practical. I deleted all the e-mails. Kath had no way to find out what I'd done.”

“Doctor Wahlund was aware you were using her e-mail account?”

“No,” Richard said. “I didn't tell her. I wasn't in contact with her. I haven't spoken to her.”

“But she would have noticed the e-mails you sent from her account.”

“I deleted them,” Richard said. “And deleted them again from the trash folder. They would have been recoverable from the server, but she had no reason to look for them.”

“You would have left a record on her browser,” Willow said. She sounded casually interested. “Activity in her account when she wasn’t there. How do you know she didn’t follow that up?”

“I deleted the browser records,” Richard said. “I don’t know how to delete the record of a deletion, but I didn’t think Kath would notice that. I haven’t been in contact with her.”

“You tried to page her from here on Sunday afternoon,” Willow said.

Richard’s head moved backwards sharply. Ray caught the movement in his peripheral vision, and looked up. That reaction had looked like Willow had hit Richard, but she hadn’t.

Richard said without a pause, “I didn’t page her.”

“I have the record of the numbers you tried to use in the locked pager Sam gave you. One of them is Doctor Wahlund’s.”

“I couldn’t get through. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through. I already tried to page Chuck. I didn’t page her,” Richard said. He was still speaking without a pause, and Ray hoped Willow had noticed. Richard was out of control; this was a good set of questions.

“Doctor Charles Nichols,” Willow said. “You tried to page him?”

“Yes. Didn’t work.”

“You’d already spoken to him on the phone.”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you speak to him?”

“Just the once.” Richard was breathing faster than normal, and shifting in his chair, not sitting still.

“You called the number for Doctor Nichols twice.”

“Yes. I tried to call him on Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday,” he added, after a moment. “I got his voicemail. I hung up. I didn’t speak to him on Tuesday.”

“You also tried to page someone else.”

“Doctor Alec Lentz,” Richard said.

Willow glanced down at her notes. It was a slip in the rapport, but it was her first. She looked up and shook her head. “Is that who you intended to call?”

“I paged him. He’s in pathology. He has one of those easy numbers, 4114. I knew I wouldn’t get through on the pager, it was locked. I was just trying all the numbers I could remember. I didn’t expect any of them to work.”

“Why did you try those three numbers in particular?”

“I knew them.” Richard was shifting in his seat again. His voice sounded uneven. “I didn’t speak to Lentz. I haven’t spoken to him. I talked about him to Chuck. I didn’t speak to him myself.”

“When did you talk about Doctor Lentz?” Willow’s tone of voice was good. Just a little curious.

Ray glanced up from his screen. Richard had that Oh you’re kidding me expression on his face again, but masked by eagerness; he was leaning forward, as if he wanted to be questioned. His hands were no longer out of sight, but resting flat on the table, clenched into fists. Ray shifted in his seat, his full attention on Richard: out of control was good for answering questions, but this was beginning to make Ray uneasy.

“When I called Chuck.” Richard took a breath. “On Thursday. I’d used Kath’s access on your laptop to look at some liver samples at Chicago Memorial Wednesday night.”

Willow nodded.

“They were samples I’d sent Lentz five years ago. For a drug he was testing. I didn’t think the drug worked. But the samples stored online looked wrong. I told Chuck about them. I told Chuck about Lentz. And Sykes.”

Willow glanced down at her notes again. Her fingers moved, evidently paging down. She looked up, clearly bewildered.

Richard was really leaning forward now, angled against the table. Willow leaned back against her chair, folding her arms. She looked as if she were trying not to look intimidated. “Lentz falsified his data,” Richard said. “He was one of the patentholders for RDU90. I told Chuck about it. Sam said you know everything I looked at, everything I did, so you know everything I know. You know about Lentz. You know about Sykes. And Chuck Nichols knows it all too.”

Willow glanced down at her notes, up again. The interview had gone out of control: Ray wondered if she had the sense to know it and close it, or if he would have to get up and do it for her.

“I didn’t kill my wife,” Richard said, not loudly, but with such intensity that it resonated through the room.

After a moment, Willow stood up. Her voice sounded quite calm, and only a little uncertain, but she was still hugging herself. “All right. This interview’s over. Ray, would you take Richard back to the holding cell? I need to work on my stuff.” She scooped up her notebook, backed off, edged away round the table, got to the door –

- Richard was already slumping forward. He had gone, in the space of thirty seconds, from someone who looked as if he might leap to his feet and attack, to the beaten slave Ray had dismissed earlier. He folded his arms and put his head down, not moving even when he must have heard Ray standing behind him. Sam had said Richard was insane.

“On your feet,” Ray said.

After a moment, Richard obeyed. He was taller than Ray, but he stood slump-shouldered, his face blank and passive. He didn’t look like someone who needed to be put in cuffs.

“You going to give me any trouble?”

After a long moment, Richard shook his head. He swallowed. “Do you think I could have some water?”

There was the tap by the commode in the cell, but come to that, even if he was crazy, Ray supposed he wouldn’t have wanted to drink out of that either.

“Sit down,” Ray said.

Just as obediently, Richard sat. Ray filled a cup with water and gave it to him. He watched as Richard drank it. Insanity explained those switch-back changes. It might even, if you wanted to make a case for it, say something about why the scumbag had killed his wife when he couldn’t have hoped to get away with it.

No.

tbc

The Pieces: Willow

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:34:59 GMT

This is part 1 of a 7-part sequence following on immediately from the last part of The Gambler. Part 2 is written and will be posted when I'm done with Part 3, as usual....

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Sorry for the long gap - partly Yuletide, partly family stuff, partly computer woes, partly a nasty cold that Santa gave me for Christmas. (He's a git, by the way.) I want to thank Dusk Peterson, whose lovely and thoughtful review of my Keptverse series to date really gave me the emotional kickstart I needed to sit down and finish part 2, despite all difficulties.

Part 1: Willow

Crying gave Willow a headache. Waking up with a headache and a sore feeling in her mouth and throat was like waking up after crying herself to sleep. Except she had not cried.

Two thousand people were going to die. Willow sat up, pushing her thumbs against her forehead. She was in one of the guest bedrooms at Gerard’s house. Giles was sitting up in the chair, or rather, slumped in it, asleep.

Two thousand people were going to be killed. Willow had sat with Adam at the kitchen table, and seen a network of connections across that whole company, branching out from site to site, workteam to workteam. She’d made it up. She’d seen it, looking at their files. But they’d believed her.

Two thousand people. If it was Tuesday already, they were all going to be dead by Friday.

Giles was still asleep. Willow got up quietly and washed her face. She wanted to talk to Sam. She had no idea what time it was. Late: the house was quiet. The door to Gerard’s room stood open: so he wasn’t in bed yet. Willow went downstairs. The kitchen door was open, and the light was on: Richard was sitting with his back to the door, and Sam facing the door. He saw her, and stood up. Richard didn’t seem to stir: Sam added, to him, “Don’t move, Richard.”

“How are you?” Sam looked tired, leaning against the wall beside her. He spoke quietly. His accent was thick with Texas (Heyareya?) that came out slurred over the words like cream.

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” Sam said. “You hungry? Want something to eat?”

“No,” Willow said. Her stomach lurched. “Yes. But. Sam, what I did – ”

“Shut up, Will.” She might only have imagined him calling her bambina, but his face looked as grim as she remembered looming above hers as she half-lay against the bathroom wall. “We are not gonna talk about that tonight. You don’t have to do it again. Get in there and sit down.”

“With Richard – ?”

Sam looked at her a moment, considering her. “Willow, how much does Richard bother you?”

“Not really,” Willow said. Sam went on looking at her. He looked grey and tired, but his eyes on her were intent. “Well, he’s sort of creepy. You know.”

Sam smiled, tight-lipped, without warmth. “No. Has he ever said or done anything that in any way made you uncomfortable?”

Willow hesitated. But – “No,” she said. Sam went on looking at her. “He’s so quiet. And he – ” She glanced through the kitchen door: Richard was sitting slumped against the table, his head down, shoulders bowed. It looked uncomfortably like someone having a cry, but Richard was silent. He was probably just asleep. There were things Richard did that made her uncomfortable, and this was one of them, but she understood what Sam meant. “No, he’s never done anything. And he never says anything.”

“I got a email offering to buy him today,” Sam said. “Different offer from last time. Lot of money. When I got something and someone else wants it and I don’t know why they want it, that just weirds me out, so you want to help me find out why everybody wants Doctor Richard Kimble?”

There was a mound of data from sixty-three Commerce reports that Willow had just begun to process. She’d lost all of today. There would be twice as much to do tomorrow. And if it wasn’t her imagination, Richard had twitched when Gerard said his old name. Could he hear them?

“Can he hear us?”

“Maybe,” Sam said “He’s kind of out of it right now.”

“I… when do you need to know?”

“I don’t know if I need to know,” Sam said. “It just gripes me not knowing. I gave everything you were working on this morning to George, and everything else to Adam, so you’ve got nothing to do now till we get the next set of files from those bastards. Friday or Monday.”

“I don’t – ” Willow was full of an awful relief, like cutting a math class and discovering later that the math teacher had been killed the previous night so the class had been cancelled anyway. “But I should – ”

“You’ve got nothing to do unless you want to help out with this Richard thing. Come on, you need food, you need to eat something.” Sam straightened himself. “Come on in and sit down.”

There was soup and bread. Richard lifted his head and began to spoon soup from the bowl when Willow sat down across from him: or rather, when Sam put a hand on his shoulder and leaned over him. Sam didn’t say anything: he just reached for his own bowl, which was empty now. Richard didn’t look up from his bowl: his face, though a grown man’s, looked in some ways empty as a child’s. Except he didn’t look lik a child. It was creepy, his silence, his lack of expression, and his downcast eyes.

“Here you go,” Sam said. The soup was canned chicken, anodyne on Willow’s throat, not the usual spice-hot brew Sam cooked up at weekends. Sam had cut two thick slices of bread, a different loaf from the one Sam had fed her bits off this morning.

Sam sat down – a chair where he could watch both Willow and Richard, Willow noticed – and leaned his chin on his fist. “That soup okay, Richard?” He sounded friendly.

Richard stopped eating. He looked at Sam – briefly, not changing his expression. “It’s good, Sam.”

“Good,” Sam said. “If it’s cold, I can zap it in the microwave.” There was something wrong with his tone of voice: he wasn’t just being friendly.

Richard said, again, in the same tone of voice “It’s good, Sam, Thank you.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said. Willow was sure of it: Sam’s voice sounded right, sort of, but it was all wrong. She went on eating the soup in her bowl. Richard’s eyes were down, and his hand moved, mechanically, soup to mouth. He didn’t look as if he wanted to eat. Sam didn’t speak again: he looked tired.

The soup was good. Willow finished it, and was eating the second piece of bread, when the door – right behind Richard’s chair – opened. Richard dropped his spoon. Sam was on his feet.

Willow looked up: Giles had woken up. He was standing in the doorway, looking more than a little dazed. Willow smiled at him, trying to look apologetic.

After a moment, Giles gave his glasses a rub, and slid them back on. “Hello,” he said.

Sam sat down again. “Hey, how are you? Want some chicken soup? I think I got another can.”

Giles appeared to give that momentary thought. “No, thank you. Willow, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Willow said, and yawned unexpectedly. “I just… woke up.”

Sam looked at Willow. “Well, you should go back to bed. Richard and I are about to.”

There was still some chicken soup left in Richard’s bowl, but he hadn’t moved since Giles opened the door. Willow stood up quickly and picked up Richard’s bowl and her own, scooping up Richard’s fallen spoon. “Okay,” she said.

Richard lifted his head for the first time and looked at her. Sam’s eyes flicked at her, and for an instant he was frowning. Willow gave an apologetic shrug, and went to the sink: she rinsed out both bowls.

“Willow,” Sam said.

“Yes, Sam.”

“You willing to do that job I asked you to do?”

“I thought,” Giles said – he sounded terribly mild, but not at all sleepy “ – that you’d given Willow the week off?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s only Richard I want Willow for, it’s not a big deal.”

Giles looked at Sam over his glasses. Willow had never seen him do that to Sam Gerard before. “Would you care to clarify that.”

Richard was sitting completely still. Willow didn’t like the look on his face.

Sam sat back, folding his hands together over his stomach. “Willow, you okay with doing what I asked you to do?”

Willow felt like she wanted to flail. She couldn’t. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay. Richard, Willow’s one of my interrogators, she’s going to begin investigation tomorrow. Don’t panic – ” though Richard hadn’t moved or blinked “ – we’re going to keep it on this side of the house. But you’re gonna cooperate with her, got it?”

There was a pause. Richard’s hands slid off the table, out of sight, into his lap: his elbows and his shoulders seemed to tuck themselves inward, as if he were flinching, becoming smaller. He bowed his head and said, to the table. “Yes, Sam.”

“I see,” Giles said, after a moment. “Well. Good night.” He glanced at Willow.

Willow came round the table, avoiding both Richard and Sam, and caught hold of Giles’ wrist: he felt solid and comforting through the fabric of his shirt. Sam nodded to them both. Richard was still sitting, hunched and still, not moving.

Willow let go of Giles when they were in the hall and the kitchen door was closed: Giles said nothing until they had reached the top of the stairs, and then only, “One of his interrogators?”

“Well,” Willow said, uncomfortably conscious that this description fitted Giles far better than it did her, “I think maybe he just wanted to scare Richard.”

She’d spoken without thinking, but knew at once – not only from the way Giles sucked in a long breath and let it out again – that this was why. “I’m just – going to find out why people want to buy Richard off Sam.”

“Yes, well,” Giles said, and then, “If you are going to be spending any time with Richard at all, I had rather he was thoroughly scared. In fact, I think cowed is the right word.”

Richard was scared of Sam. Of course he was. Willow went on to the guest room. That wasn’t exactly news. She wanted to be in the guest room with the door shut and a pillow over her head before she heard Sam and Richard coming upstairs. She could deal with the idea of Richard frightened: and she knew – everyone did – that people had bodyslaves they used for sex. But the bodyslaves she had seen had all seemed to make their service something elegant and clean, delicate and luxurious – not a real man with a real and solid body, who was really going to be raped. Not long from now, in a bedrooom just down the hall.

“Are you all right?” Giles asked. Willow had waited till he was inside and shut the door very firmly.

“I’m just going to brush my teeth,” Willow said.

“Wait,” Giles said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you really all right?”

“No,” Willow said. She looked up at him. “Are you?”

Whenever they had to share a bed, they just kicked their shoes off and lay down on the coverlet and each took a blanket. It wasn’t even really embarrassing any more: they’d done it so often in so many motels, before they got to Illinois. You could say almost anything to Giles, but when they were lying down next to each other on a double bed, even a big one, even when they were both dressed, Willow did not want to talk about how she was thinking, in an awkward kind of way, about Sam and Richard. About Sam raping Richard. Somehow it was just as embarrassing to think of Sam as a rapist as it was to think of Richard beinhttp://www.journalfen.net/update.bmlg raped. More so.

“Sleep well,” Giles said. It was after one in the morning. He switched the light out on his side of the bed, and after a moment, Willow did the same on hers. Giles had asked if she was all right because two thousand people are going to die. Willow lay still in the semi-darkness. She had forgotten. How could you forget something like that, even for a moment?

She thought she would not be able to go to sleep. It seemed to her that she spent a long time staring at the shadows on the wall, listening to Giles breathe beside her. But she must have gone to sleep quite fast, because she could not remember hearing Sam or Richard at all, once she and Giles were upstairs.

tbc

The Gambler - Part Seven

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:09:24 GMT

This is the last part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part, fifth part, sixth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse.

Part Seven

Richard’s head was heavy against his shoulder, and he was almost completely relaxed, his breathing even. It seemed that after a while, staying tense was too much of a fight for him. Gerard’s back was cramping up and his butt hurt, and this wasn’t getting him anywhere.

It was possible to open the door of the holding cell from the inside: but Gerard called George to let him out, and they went downstairs, leaving Richard locked in, and Gerard told them. He supposed he would also have to tell Dana, Benton, and Ray: but even after half an hour holding Richard, he had no better thought of how to tell his kids what had happened but simply to break the news as swiftly as he could.

Adam was the only one whose face did not change at all, though probably no one but Gerard noticed George's reaction. Giles turned away, taking off his glasses, fidgeting with them, his head bent. Willow went absolutely white – so white Gerard thought she was going to faint, but she stood still.

"Decimation has been on the books for years as a penalty, but this is the first time to my knowledge that Commerce has ordered it. The first time for this large a group - we would have heard about this if it had happened before. I didn't know Commerce was going to order it: no one could have known." Gerard rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "I don't know when they'll carry it out. It will take some time physically to arrange the disposal of the bodies. I would guess not before Wednesday."

"Three days minimum, assuming they work a twelve-hour day," Adam said. "Unless you have processing facilities ready set up, and they don't, it takes time to kill that many people and dispose of the bodies."

Willow swallowed. She said, in a strained, polite voice, "Excuse me," and went past Gerard out of the room: into the downstairs bathroom. The bolt slammed shut. They could all hear the violent retching noise that followed.

Giles looked at Adam. Gerard ignored them both, went to the kitchen, picked up what he wanted, and came back. George, Adam, and Giles were standing in a semi-circle round the bathroom door, looking at each other.

"We tried knocking," Giles said, as Gerard brushed past him.

"How do you plan on getting her to open the door?" George asked, with genuine interest.

"I’ll get Dana," Adam said.

Gerard ignored them. He set down what he was carrying, put his right hand on the door below the knob, just where the bolt was on the other side, and his left hand on the doorknob itself. Turn the knob sharply and literally lift the door by the friction of the painted wood against his hand: the bolt on the other side fell off its hook, and the door opened. Gerard would not normally have made so clear to his kids that there wasn't a door in his house that could be bolted against him, but right now he didn’t care.

He picked up bottle and loaf and was inside. He bolted the door again: it would take them more than five minutes to figure out the trick of opening it. There was a shelf for oddments inside: he put bottle and loaf down again before he dropped them or put them down somewhere fouled.

Willow was collapsed over the toilet pedestal, head down. She was alive; her soughing breath was loud in the quiet room. The air smelled sour.

Gerard picked her up and put her down against the far wall: she wasn't limp, but she didn't struggle. There was everything back to yesterday's breakfast in the toilet, but no sign of any blood or shit in the vomit, and as far as Gerard could tell, it smelled normal. Gerard put the lid down and flushed: the smell didn't go away, but it started getting better.

Willow was staring at him, her face fouled and tearful. Gerard unrolled toilet paper, wetted it at the sink, crouched down, and wiped the worst of the mess off her face. He put the paper down the toilet, flushed again, and filled the toothglass at the sink. "Can you get up, bambina?" He picked her up on the question, lifted the glass to her mouth. "Don't swallow, just swill it round and spit." He lifted the toilet lid again to let her spit where it could be flushed. "Okay. Again." He put her down against the far wall: she was beginning to feel like a human being in his hands, not a haeftling.

This time he wetted the handtowel, and let her mop her own face with it. He tore a piece off the loaf, a mouthful. "Eat that. Chew, swallow. Go on, it's just bread."

The handtowel got dumped in the bin the cleaners had put in after Dana started working there: Gerard never normally looked in it.

"I'm sorry," Willow said, raw with pain, through a second mouthful of bread.

"Shut up," Gerard said. "Chew, swallow. Good." He wiped off the rim of the toothglass and poured a short finger of brandy into it. "Drink this. You got nothing to be sorry about, Willow. Drink it." He held it to her mouth, tilted the cup, and she gulped the mouthful as if it were water, which she might have been expecting, and she gasped and choked as the burn hit. "Okay." He handed her another piece of bread, larger. "Eat that, bambina, it's an order."

He sat down on the pedestal, leaning forward, and watched Willow. She had colour back in her face and her breathing sounded normal: it was temporary but she was good to listen to him.

"We all did that, you know."

Willow stared at him. The piece of bread was in her hand, against her mouth: her jaws still moved.

"I passed that report on to Commerce. I knew they'd take action, I didn't know it was going to be like this, but I knew when I did it that some slaves were going to die and a lot more were going to suffer. I decided to do that. Not you. You did what I told you to do. No, I'm not going to tell you it was not your fault, Willow, because – " Because you wouldn't believe me " – but I am telling you: we all did it. Adam and you, and George, and me – and even Dana, for making our medical details convincing. You're the only one who threw up. The rest of us, we've all had times when – all you can do is unload your stomach – but we're all a lot older than you are. It doesn't say anything bad or good about you, it just says your stomach's not hardened to this."

"Two... thousand..." Willow said it jerkily, around the bread. "How can you...?"

"Time," Gerard said. "It's been years since I threw up like that." He smiled, though it was hardly funny. "Kid, it's decades."

"Tell me about your first time," Willow said.

"What?" Gerard heard himself snap the word into three syllables, like a whip: but Willow didn't flinch. She pushed the last of the bread into her mouth.

"What made you throw up like I did?"

Gerard poured another short finger of brandy. "Let me tell you what's going to happen when you get this down you." He handed Willow the toothglass. "You're going to drink this. You're going to have one more piece of bread. You're going to lie down upstairs, and if you’re not out cold in ten minutes Dana’s going to give you a sedative. Got it?"

"I'll drink it if you tell me about your first time," Willow said. She didn't sound too steady: the burn of booze on an emptied stomach gave the recipient a floating feeling.

"Drink it," Gerard said, and watched her raise the glass to her mouth. "My first time? Jesus Christ. I can't tell a kid like you a story like that."

"I k-killed two thousand people," Willow said. "I'm not a kid... anymore."

"I was twenty," Gerard said. "I was about to head off for my first tour of duty. There was one kid, he'd borrowed his father's bodyslave. We were all real drunk. One of my friends, big kid, same age as me but tall and pretty damn strong, he got the bodyslave down and he started whaling away on his ass with his hands. He kept saying he was going to make it good, he knew how. The bodyslave was howling, but you could tell – I could tell – he was making it sound like he was hurting, but it wasn't nothing." Gerard folded his hands across his knees. "Then my pal got mad, because we could all tell the howling was just acting, we were all laughing. And he unshipped his belt and he got me to kneel on the man's shoulders and he went to work on the man's back. And pretty soon the noise wasn't acting, not at all." Gerard stopped. He looked at Willow. "I don't know if you're old enough to hear this, Will, but you ever feel something, really strong, really want something, and know you're a complete piece of shit for wanting it? That was me, right then. And I got up off the guy and went to the bathroom and I threw up everything back to breakfast. I haven't thrown up like that since. You get casehardened. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just something that happens. Okay, Will, eat one more mouthful of bread and we're getting out of here."

"I don't think I can get up," Willow said.

"Yeah," Gerard said. He took away the toothglass and put it up on the shelf beside the bottle. "Eat the bread, kid. Bite down, chew, swallow. Good. Gonna tell you one more thing, Will, because you're going to be out like a light by the time you get upstairs: you don’t have to do this again. I promise. When you wake up you're gonna have a square meal or three and you're going home, and you're not going to do any work for a week, and you don’t have to do this again. Got it?"

The bread seemed to have been swallowed. Willow's head was lolling back, and she was swaying. Gerard stood up and lifted Willow to her feet, putting his arm round her to hold her against him, and opening the door. Willow was barely conscious enough to be walked to the stairs: Gerard ignored both men hovering and got her there. Upstairs was trickier: she kept falling over. Gerard dumped her on the bed, propped up pillows behind her, dropped a blanket over her, watched her literally fall sleep as he stood up, and left the room, coming face to face with Giles, who had his glasses off.

“Good, you can sit with her,” Gerard said. “Call me and Dana when she wakes up, got it?”

“Did you just get Willow drunk?”

“Yeah,” Gerard nodded. “If you got a better fix, you can do it when she wakes up. I told her she could go home, I told her she was off work for a week, I told her she never had to do anything like this again. You can take her home once she’s woken up, isn’t throwing up, and she’s had something to eat. Stay with her until I call you in.”

Giles opened his mouth. Gerard shook his head. “Put your glasses back on, we’re not going to have a fight over this. Did Adam get Dana?”

“Yes, she’s downstairs…” Giles did put his glasses on, settling them on his nose, looking at Gerard. “Shouldn’t you have waited for her?”

Gerard shook his head again. He thought of saying Next time I’ll do it better. He didn’t say it. “Anything you need, call,” and went downstairs.

He told Dana. Her face went white, too, but she didn’t throw up. After a while, she asked how much alcohol he’d given Willow, and went upstairs to check on her: when she came back, she and Adam went back to the clinic on the other side of the house.

Gerard sat down and looked at George. “I’m not going to say this again,” he said. “If you hadn’t got that report edited, it could have been every site at that company decimated, not just one.”

George didn’t answer. He had a number of files open. “We still need to get these done.”

“Yeah. Can you run the numbers using Willow’s algorithms?”

“I can try,” George said, after a moment. “You think we can’t use Willow again.”

“Maybe not.” Gerard said. “If we can’t, if she’s permanently cracked, she goes with the next foreign delivery. Her and Giles, we can’t keep him without her.”

George nodded. After a moment, not looking at Gerard, he said “I suppose the principle that two hundred thousand is a bigger number than two thousand ought to help.”

“But it doesn’t,” Gerard said.

George’s face was dry and focussed, and his voice had lost all affect: he sounded as if he wanted to kill someone. “No. It doesn’t.” After a moment, he did look at Gerard. “And whatever it was you were doing to Richard, earlier… did that help?”

Gerard shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for that. He still had to tell Ray and Benton.

When an e-mail arrived from Devlin-McGregor, at first Gerard assumed it must be arrangements about the killing – or thanks or complaint, if Commerce had told them where the report of their “situation” came from. He read it twice before he understood it wasn’t.

“Someone else wants to buy Richard?”

“What?” George looked up.

“I just had an offer,” Gerard said. “From a pharmaceutical company. To buy the contract of the slave I’m holding for a Final destination.” Gerard looked at the figure in the e-mail. “It’s higher than the offer I got from Doctor Nicholls last week.”

“Well,” George said. He looked back at the files, briefly, and then at Gerard. “Another rescue attempt?”

Gerard shrugged. “Probably. Doctor Kimble seems to have been a popular kind of guy.”

“Why not just let them have him?”

There was a pause. George went on looking at Gerard, eyebrows raised. Gerard shrugged again. “If I get rid of him, I just have to begin again with some other guy. I’d probably have the same kind of problems with any convict. Richard’ll learn.”

“He hasn’t yet, then.”

“He will,” Gerard said. He was reasonably confident about this: Richard was stubborn, but he couldn’t hold out forever.

In the hall, they heard Benton and Ray coming in. Gerard felt a cold weight settling on him. Time to go.

end of “The Gambler”

The next section begins once I’m finished writing for Yuletide. *tears hair* Send good thoughts!

The Gambler - Part Six

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:46:09 GMT

This is the sixth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part, fifth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Seven, the last part of "The Gambler", is now complete and will be posted tomorrow. The next story is "The Pieces", another ensemble section, and the last story is "End Game", plus a couple of possible stand-alones in which neither Richard Kimble nor Sam Gerard appear. But I really need to stop writing this in order to write my Yuletide story, so I'm resolved: I won't start on "The Pieces" till I'm done with Yuletide, at least to first draft.

Part Six

When the door opened, Richard was standing by the wall below the window, his hands resting on the wall: he might have been leaning his face against it, but he turned quickly when he heard the door open.

“We’re going to have something to eat,” Gerard said. “Come here.”

Richard leant back against the wall. “I’m not hungry.”

“Did I ask you? Come here.”

Richard sat down. He folded his arms over his knees and his head bent down. He didn’t move.

Gerard was tired and angry enough that he didn’t feel any real hunger himself: he knew if he ate nothing now, he’d wake with a bellyache about five in the morning. He wanted to make sure Richard was fed.

“Richard,” Gerard said. He put a crack of command into it, and saw Richard twitch: not quite a move to get up, but nearly.

“What do you imagine I’m gonna do, Richard?” Gerard leaned against the open door. “Shut you in here because you’ve decided you want to play prisoner? Come over there and kick the shit out of you? It’s late, I’m tired, I’m gonna put a couple of sandwiches together for both of us and you can come right back here if you like, but if you sit there like that for even thirty more seconds I am putting you in cuffs and leg-irons and you are spending the night on the floor of my room. Got it?”

It was an unplanned threat, but Richard reacted to it: he lifted his head, looked at Gerard, and – within the half-minute – he was standing on his feet, swaying a little, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Come here,” Gerard repeated, and Richard walked towards him. His face wasn’t passive any more. He looked angry. Maybe that was what he was trying to hide. Slaves weren’t supposed to be angry.

It made a good-looking change from passive. Gerard put his hand on Richard’s shoulder and steered him down the stairs. Richard kept his hands in his pockets; Gerard let him till they were all but at the kitchen door. The pager had been shoved down into the right-hand front pocket: Gerard took it away from him and pocketed it, before he made Richard sit in the chair with its back to the door, from which Richard couldn’t get up in a hurry without making some noise.

Gerard put together two cold meat sandwiches, layered with tomato, and left them on the counter while he checked out the pager. Richard had tried to use it to page two or three numbers, all of which would have to be checked against the ones Richard had tried the previous week, but then seemed to have spent at least some time on trying to crack the security code.

“Next time, don’t even try,” Gerard told Richard, pocketing the pager again. “Waste of your time.”

“And you keep me so busy,” Richard said, and seemed to choke, or sob: a deep gutteral noise, that might even have been a laugh.

Gerard sat down and pushed the plate at Richard, taking one himself. “Go on.” He waited until Richard had the sandwich in his hands. “You know, there’s goddam little you can do around here, and there’s even less I can trust you to do around here after the stunt you pulled last week.”

Richard stared at him for a moment, and then took a grim bite of the sandwich he was holding. Gerard nodded, and began to eat. For once, they both finished at almost the same time: Richard must have been hungry, for all his claims not to be.

“The runaways,” Richard said. “Did you catch them?”

“Yes, we did,” Gerard said.

“And they’re here,” Richard said. Not a question, this time. “You’re going to interrogate them. Find out who helped them.” He still sounded angry.

“That’s none of your business,” Gerard said, keeping his voice dead level. He stood up. “We’re going to bed now. So, where do you want to spend the night?”

Richard stared up at him. “Why do you ask?”

Gerard put his hand on the back of Richard’s neck, feeling collar and skin against his palm. “You’ve got a choice,” he said. He was finding Richard more attractive right now than he’d found him in a week of passive silence and invisible resistance. “I told you.”

Not like a window or like a mask,but with a kind of slow resignation, Richard’s face changed. His voice wasn’t angry, any more: it wasn’t anything. “With you, Sam.”

“The hell,” Gerard said briefly, and urged Richard to his feet. “Upstairs.”

The improvised sleeping mat and blanket was still in Gerard’s bedroom. Gerard let Richard use the bathroom, and handed him the bundle of blankets and comforter.

Richard stood still, ignoring Gerard’s touch pointing him at the door, “Why do you ask,” he said, not angrily as before: tired and flat. “Whatever I say…”

“I pay attention,” said Gerard. “Go on.” He did not trust this kind of resignation in Richard – that anger had been genuine – and he was tired and angry enough not to trust himself. There were four scared kids in cells on the other side of the house, without blankets or anything to drink or eat.

The three numbers Richard had tried to page were two doctors, Nicholls and Wahlund, and the third number also belonged to Chicago Memorial hospital, though the current holder wasn’t anyone Richard could have known.

Richard spent Sunday for the most part with earphones on the sofa in the lounge, ignored by Giles and Adam when they were there: they spent some time over on the other side of the house, and Gerard put Richard back in the holding cell while they made their report.

The two slaves were numb with terror, and it was impossible for either Giles or Adam to get much useful information out of them. They were fully expecting to be killed, of course: slaves knew nothing good happened to runaways.

The Forrester kid was still angry even after twelve hours: and the Channing kid cracked like an egg.

“She found out Tam and Bo were seeing each other,” Adam said. “She thought it was all very romantic, She wanted to help them get away. She talked Stephanie into letting them use her house as a first stop, thinking it was far enough away they wouldn’t be searched for there, and then arranged to go away and not take Tam with her.”

“Ridge Forrester is marked down as an abolitionist by Commerce. Someone who didn’t like him much put his name on the list. Could have been any one of his three ex-wives,” Gerard said, with some grim humour. “Or this would likely never have come to our attention.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“I want to get Willow to run the numbers for us,” Gerard said, without answering the question. “Add it up.”

Gerard's office on the safe side had a window on to the garden. When he was doing the administrative work, Gerard never looked out: his desk faced a wall.

The phone rang: it was the admin office in Commerce.

"We'd like to congratulate you on your extraction of the five subjects you were sent last week," the cool voice said.

Gerard had never met any of them. They always spoke in the plural. He had been expecting this call today.

"Thank you very much," Gerard said. He went on listening, looking out of the window at the wired wall and the grey grass.

"My team did good work," Gerard said finally. "We could do better, if next time, we get subjects that haven't been so damaged. Especially in the mouth."

There was a pause. The cool voice said "We find it best to ensure other resources are aware of the severity of the consequences involved. Your methods are very effective, Mr Gerard, but in effect a subject sent to you simply disappears: there is no ...sensory impact."

"I appreciate that," Gerard said. "But you understand, the quality of the information we can provide is dependent on the quality of the subjects you provide."

"We are very impressed with the quality of your work even subject to those restrictions. We have passed on our recommendations to Devlin-MacGregor, based on the situation discovered by your report."

"Thank you very much," Gerard said again. He reached out a hand to the cool glass of the window, leaned against it. "Can I ask what your recommendation was?"

"Decimation of the labour at the contaminated site," the voice from Commerce said. "We saw the need to send a strong message."

"I appreciate that," Gerard said. "That site is twenty thousand slaves, isn't it? More or less."

"That's correct, Mr Gerard. We feel that the loss of two thousand resources falls within acceptable limits. Agents of Commerce will of course be on hand to see the lossage is carried out humanely."

Gerard sat down at his desk. A file was open on his computer screen: it was something about running costs. In one empty field, he entered the figures for two million. "Well, that'll send a message," he said. In the next, the figures for twenty thousand. "Do you suppose this company, Devlin-Macgregor, will want to follow through?"Under the first field, he entered the formula to calculate 10%, and copied it into the next field. "It's a pretty extravagant message. They're a robust company. Of course I appreciate the significance of our information, but with two thousand slaves you run the risk of taking out some valuable properties." In another field, he entered the formula to subtract one result from the other.

"I am sure that Devlin-MacGregor will ensure that the less valuable slaves will be predominantly chosen," the voice from Commerce said. "We shall strongly recommend that they resolve the situation. We wish to thank you for the report which drew our attention to the risks inherent in this situation."

"Yeah," Gerard said, "My team do good work. Glad to hear you appreciate the information we provide."

The conversation was really over: they exchanged a few more compliments, and Gerard set the phone down. He sat still, staring at the figures on the screen, feeling cold in his stomach, a little breathless. He glanced at his watch: it was half past eleven. He closed the file, without saving the data he had just entered.

Downstairs, over the other side of the house, George, Willow, Adam and Giles were all in the lounge, all working. Dana was running medical tests in the clinic, figuring out the death reports for the four prisoners; they’d need two at least, and she might as well do all four while Willow was running the numbers. Gerard had meant to let Richard out for lunch: the work he had to do this afternoon he could do at his desk in the lounge. He hadn’t slept with Richard last night, either.

Richard was sitting on the floor, his hands fallen between his knees, his head back against the wall. He was looking at the door when Gerard came in.

Gerard closed the door behind himself, with a solid thump. Richard looked startled. He didn't get up, but his hands shifted, as if he were thinking about it.

"Don't move," Gerard said. He came over. Nothing much was clear to him that he wanted, but he could have this. "Shift your ass, I want to sit down behind you."

He sat down, leaned back against the wall, and put his arms round Richard. There was no more than an instant's unwilled resistance: Richard leaned back, his head against Gerard's shoulder, instead of the wall.

Holding Richard like this, Gerard could feel the bones of his shoulders digging in: each breath he took, like warmth inside him: the beating of his heart. His whole and solid body, alive, unharmed.

"Do you know the difference between twenty thousand and two hundred thousand?"

Richard's voice sounded creaky. "One hundred and eighty thousand."

"One number is a lot bigger than the other," Gerard said. "But they're both very big numbers. Aren't they?"

"I suppose so."

"I don't have an answer for you," Gerard said. "It ought to make a difference that one number's a lot bigger. I guess it does. It really does." He tightened his grip on Richard.

"It usually does," Richard said. He tilted his head to look at Gerard. Gerard turned his head away.

"The thing is..." Gerard said, and his voice trailed off.

Telling the kids about the situation was something that couldn't be helped. It seemed unlikely that Commerce would manage to keep it entirely out of the news.

Or even if they did: Willow, of all his kids, would find out anyway.

"Sam, are you all right?"

"Fine," Gerard said. He felt distantly startled. "I'm good. How about you?"

"I'm good," Richard said.

"That's fine. I'm just going to sit here and hold you, okay? I'm not going to hurt you. Not at all."

tbc

The Gambler – Part Five

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:08:30 GMT

This is the fourth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Five

Giles delivered Willow on his way to DeKalb. When presented with earphones, plugged into the TV’s sound, Richard had taken them. He was sitting in the chair furthest from the door, and he hadn’t moved, though Gerard wasn’t sure he was watching the screen: watching them both, Willow’s face looked more surprised than Richard’s.

She didn’t ask any questions, though: Giles would have, and they might have been Willow’s. Gerard had not fathomed the relationship the two of them had.

Gerard had already pulled out the obviously useful information, and sent it to Adam and Giles: photographs, names, what had been reported stolen by the Channing household – if they had run. The state police had roadblocks up, and neither slave was reported able to drive: they had both been sold in childhood.

“Okay, there’s four possibilities as I see it,” Gerard said. “They’re runaways; their owner helped them escape; they were stolen; they’re a covert sale reported stolen; they’ve been killed, and the owners decided reporting them as runaways would save trouble.”

“Would they do that?” Willow said. She bit her lip. “I don’t mean would they: I mean why would they think it would save them trouble?” She glanced over at Richard. “Can he hear us?” It was her first question about Richard.

“No,” Gerard said. The earphones were seated: Richard had no control over the TV’s sound: unless he could remove them surreptiously, he was listening to British dialogue from a decades-old TV show. “He won’t be fetching coffee for us, though. They’d have to be idiots to think reporting a death’s less trouble than reporting a runaway. Commerce fines for a death, they’ll prosecute for a fake report.” And verdicts where Commerce was the plaintiff had a tradition of ending up with the loser enslaved. “But Commerce knew about this for three hours before they called us, so they think it’s a runaway or a theft. Might not be, though. What are the other choices? What are Adam and Giles needing to look for?”

“Well…” Willow swallowed, and looked away from Richard, back at her computer screen. Her face changed: she was thinking. “They were bought for the daughter?”

“Tam was. Bo was kitchen staff.” Tam had been bought as a companion for the only daughter, Emma: she was away from home this week: if the runaways weren’t caught by the time she came back, she’d face interrogation. Not by Gerard, or Commerce, not unless there was evidence of complicity. Some at least. It was going to be quite a shock for her. If she hadn’t instigated it, and even if she had, if she’d thought she could get away with it.

The first DVD ran out: Gerard switched it over for the next, and fetched Willow coffee. He worked on the Commerce files: sixty-three cases that linked to Northern Illinois from other US Marshal districts. George and he would compare notes on Monday. Richard never moved. The second time Gerard changed DVDs he did so without thinking Richard was watching: he was sitting back in the chair, almost curled in it, with his eyes closed. But it prevented him hearing any injudicious remarks, even though he and Willow could work together like this without saying anything out loud. Willow was sending Adam and Giles targeted packets of information: Giles was with the police in Sterling, fifty-five miles away and the furthest from DeKalb the slave Tam had ever been. Adam was still at the house working his way through the staff.

It occurred to Gerard about halfway through the evening that he was hungry and that Willow needed to eat, and that Richard had to be hungry too.

Richard reacted slowly when Gerard took the earphones out: he didn’t answer when Gerard asked him if he was hungry. He had been sitting in the chair for a long time – hours, since two o’clock – and he hadn’t moved or said a word. He went with Gerard to the kitchen, and sat down as Gerard directed, and then when Gerard looked round again, a box of stew defrosting in the microwave, Richard had folded his arms on the table and put his head down on to his arms.

“Richard,” Gerard said.

Richard didn’t move for a long instant. When he lifted his head and looked at Gerard, his face was passive. He said nothing.

“Come here.”

Richard stood up. He was still moving awkwardly, as if sitting still so long had cramped his muscles. He got to within arm’s reach of Gerard and stopped.

“How’s your ears?”

“Fine,” Richard said, toneless. He stared at Gerard. “Can you shut me in the cell?”

In your room? Gerard shook his head, without correcting Richard. “You need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You still need to eat,” Gerard told him. It was hard not to feel sorry for him: even given Richard’s attempts to communicate with the outside world were good enough reason why he shouldn’t be allowed access to the cell without permission and a search. “No.”

Gerard’s phone rang: Giles. As often with young runaways, the case had come to an end without a climax: Tam and Bo were hiding – or being hidden – in the attic of a friend of Emma’s, who lived near Sterling. Giles was supervising their loading into the back of an armoured van: he was trying to hold off the local representative of Commerce.

“Good work,” Gerard told him briefly. “Just get them over here.”

“They want to take the daughter, too.”

“Okay, I’ll see to that.”

“Sam, I think she did have something to do with it.”

“Yeah?” Gerard tapped his hand against his thigh. “Get those two into the van and get them over here. I’ll call Adam. What’s Commerce doing with the family where they were hiding?”

“They’ve all been arrested. There are three other children, besides the one Commerce wants, two of them under-age.”

“Yeah. The police have them?”

“Yes, and I’ve called the social workers in. Commerce only wants the oldest girl.”

“Okay, don’t let them have her. I can get her out of a police cell, let the police have her. Make sure none of them get to talk to each other. Gag them if you have to. We need their stories clean. Do whatever you have to do, I want the three of them here.”

There were six holding cells on the other side of the house. So far, they had never all been in use.

Gerard called Adam: he was on it. Willow had sent him Emma’s location. Gerard shut the phone up – he would need to talk to Commerce and the local police soon, but it was time for Richard to get his wish.

“You’re going in your room,” Gerard said.

Richard was staring, hands by his sides, twitching a little. “You’re going to interrogate – ” His voice had risen.

“I’m going to do my job,” Gerard overrode him. “Get upstairs.” When Richard didn’t move, Gerard took him by the arm and walked him to the stairs. He felt Richard’s muscles twitch as if he was thinking of resistance, and jerked his arm up behind his back. “Don’t give me any shit, Richard, I mean it.”

Gerard patted Richard down before he pushed him through the door, and threw the code-locked pager at Richard: he’d set it up days earlier. Richard caught it and looked at it, visibly surprised.

“There won’t be anyone in the house,” Gerard said. “If you have an emergency, page me. I’ll come or I’ll send someone. That won’t work for anyone’s number but mine, so don’t even think it. And if it’s not an emergency, whoever gets here is going to beat six kinds of crap out of you for wasting our time.” He shut the door on Richard, and ran down the stairs: Willow was waiting in the hall. No one in the Channing household had yet been arrested, and Willow had a stack of reasons why, beginning with an application in process to make Emma’s father Lord Kevin. She followed him through to the armoury, listing them.

“Need you to stay here,” Gerard said, once he was armed. “If you hear Richard – ” it would have to be a real scream to penetrate the walls of the holding cell “ – you call me. Don’t open the cell door no matter what you hear. I need you to check these files in Commerce – ”

He began to list them, and Willow was paying attention, following Gerard to the door. “I can do that.”

“I know you can,” Gerard said. “Don’t go near the holding cell.” It was beginning to rain outside. He ran for his car.

They came back with two cars, one van, and four prisoners: Adam had gone to collect the girl Emma, but had swiped all the data from the household’s computers before he left. The two runaways were in the back of the van, separately hooded and cuffed: Giles looked more than a little tight-mouthed over that, but he’d done his job properly. Gerard had the other free girl, Emma’s friend, who probably knew nothing useful, cuffed in the back of his car. He still wasn’t sure what her name was: the family were Forrester, but her name was either Steffy or Stephanie. Giles’ car was still parked in DeKalb and would need to be collected at some point.

Commerce had got more worked up than the situation on the face of it justified: four teenagers who’d embarked on what might have looked like a big adventure. The fugitives department might still be twitching over the Devlin-MacGregor thing.

Adam was twenty minutes behind them on the road: between them he and Giles got the Forrester girl out of the car, into the house, and into one of the three holding cells in that row, the far one, so they wouldn’t have to pass her door when they brought Emma in. She struggled as far as someone in cuffs could struggle: she protested with outrage: she demanded to know where she was and to call a lawyer: but, Gerard noticed, the confusion and anger was not mixed with surprise: she knew what she’d done, she hadn’t expected to pay this penalty.

The two slaves were easier; they didn’t fight or ask questions. They went in the other row of holding cells, separated by one.

The last girl went into the cell Richard had been in. Closing the door on her, Gerard was conscious of real relief: it wasn’t over, but the worst that could happen now was they’d have to find four separate places to disappear these four kids.

“We’ll leave them all there for twelve hours to stew,” Gerard said. “I’m going to call Fugitives from the office.” He meant the one upstairs on this side of the house. “I’m still going to want you both tomorrow morning, but you can go home now.”

Adam glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Thanks.”

“Bring doughnuts,” Gerard added, and, to Giles, “Leave Willow at home. She’s done enough for a week.”

Emma Channing’s parents had already complained to Commerce, they let Gerard know: Stephanie Forrester’s parents were being investigated by the police, but Commerce had found no evidence of regular harbouring when they searched the house.

Gerard let the cool voice finish.

“Your local agents intended to arrest both Emma Channing and Stephanie Forrester,” he said. “I was told I would get the fugitives, but I wanted all four. We’ll juice them for you. I’ll instruct my team to go careful on the minors. You’ll want to return them to their parents if it turns out they’re innocent.”

“Do you suspect some kind of conspiracy?” The voice at the other end could not sound angry, or suspicious – these emotions had been drilled out of Commerce staff: but either there was some kind of suspicion hovering over the Forresters, or someone was very mad at that family. A minor child of a wealthy family wouldn’t normally end up being taken by Commerce for what a sympathetic interpreter could have decided was the informal loan of two slaves from one household to another by someone with no right to lend them.

“I have no idea,” Gerard said. “We’ll find out for you. Thank you. Good night.”

He put the phone down. It was necessary to put the four kids out of his mind: he’d have Giles and Adam interrogate them, and Willow could run the numbers and put the final touches to the report they’d send about them on Monday. He didn’t think either the Forresters or the Channings were connected to any network. They might not have to turn their daughters in. The two other kids, Tam and Bo: Dana would have to work out how they died. Gerard planned never, if possible, to see any of the four kids again. Certainly none of them should get to see him.

The other side of the house was empty: Gerard shut down his laptop in the lounge before he went upstairs to get Richard out of the holding cell.

tbc

The Gambler - Part Four

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:57:44 GMT

This is the fourth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Four

George walked into the kitchen, eyed Richard, and switched the kettle on. “Good afternoon,” he said.

They were still eating lunch – or Richard was moving food around his plate, and Gerard was nursing a second mug of coffee. “Hey,” Gerard said, equably. “Aren’t you early?” He squinted at this watch. “No. we’re late.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Put him in his room,” Gerard said. He glanced at Richard. “Soon as he’s finished what he’s got on his plate.”

George made himself a mug of tea. He sat down at the table. He said nothing, and said it with visible disapproval and impatience.

Gerard grinned, amused. “Eat up, Richard.”

Richard put his fork down. “I’m not hungry,” he said, almost steadily, and looked across the table to meet Gerard’s eyes.

“I don’t care. Just eat the damn food,” Gerard said. He was startled and annoyed when George laughed, even if he could see what George was amused by.

“It’s a problem, isn’t it?” George said, to Gerard. “How do you punish him? Force feeding?” He glanced at Richard. “Don’t get too complacent,” he added. Sometimes his voice could go completely flat, affectless: it was like that now. “Sam might not want you dead, but I’d have killed you. I still may.”

Richard’s eyes flickered to George, and back to Gerard. His hands had dropped from the table.

Gerard stood up and went round the table, giving George a tap on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said to Richard. “Don’t panic, nobody’s going to kill you.”

After a moment, Richard stood up, and Gerard caught hold of his wrist: his pulse was racing.

They went upstairs: at the door of the holding cell, Gerard patted Richard down. There was nothing in any of the pockets of his jeans, nothing held beneath clothing. “Okay. We’ll be done in an hour or two. Probably. In you go.”

“Sam,” Richard said.

“What?”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“You won’t be allowed out of this room unsupervised,” Gerard said. “And you won’t be able to take anything in here with you again. You got that?”

Richard nodded.

“No one is going to kill you,” Gerard repeated. “You got most of my kids mad at you, but not that mad.”

Richard nodded again: his mouth worked. “I didn’t – ”

“Richard, we know what you did,” Gerard cut across him. “We know what websites you looked at, what pages you looked at, and how long you looked at them. We know whose laptops you used. We know what phone calls you made, and who to. We know whose phones you used. We know it, Richard.” He closed the door.

Downstairs, George hadn’t even finished his first mug of tea. He eyed Gerard thoughtfully as the other man sat down: he had a look of ironic amusement.

Gerard picked up his coffee. He eyed George back.

“Did he panic?” George inquired. He sounded interested.

“No,” Gerard said. “Not quite.” He drank coffee. He wanted to set Richard aside. “George – last night. When did you know that Richard had access – that he was the leak?”

George set both his hands together in front of him. He met Gerard’s eyes. His voice was dry and firm. “I set about looking at the records after you sent the revised report to Commerce. The first anomaly I noticed was on Doctor Scully’s phone: intensive use, Thursday afternoon, at a time when Dana had been supposedly at work in the clinic. When I remembered that at some time on Thursday Richard had voluntarily shut himself up in the holding cell and stayed there until you sent Benton to get him out, and when I checked the numbers and found that the last number called from Dana’s phone was that of Charles Nicholls, then I knew Richard was the most obvious source of the leak to Doctor Nicholls. The rest…” George shrugged. “Richard was enterprising. You’ll want to discourage that, if you keep him.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“It only became a significant concern when I realised how much access to the outside world Richard had taken. Even then, the risks of stopping the flight were clearly higher than the odds that Richard was a very well-buried mole. I’d looked up his records quite thoroughly the Sunday after you bought him.”

Gerard leaned forward a little. “It wasn’t your job to decide that,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“It is my job to assess these risks,” George said, just as coldly.

“The decisions are mine.”

“Adam, Benton, and Ray were in the drop zone by the time I knew what Richard had been doing: we couldn’t communicate with them without risk. The foreign delivery was due. If Richard knew what we’d been doing and had told Commerce – and I remind you there was and is no evidence that he had – then all three of them were lost and our mission was fatally compromised. The only thing to do by the time I knew it was to wait for them to make their report, and to immobilise and secure Richard. It didn’t seem to make much difference what order we did it in. I didn’t tell you until we knew the three of them were safe, that’s all. It was no more than half an hour, I give you my word – from when I guessed it was Richard to when I told you.” George said it all coldly and evenly, apparently with complete indifference to Gerard’s reaction: but then he disarmed most of Gerard’s anger by leaning forward and saying, “Sam, I just didn’t see why you had to have that worry.”

George in full protective mode: Gerard’s smile was entirely internal. “Because that’s my job,” he said finally, leaning back again. “You know it is. You wouldn’t tolerate that either if you were in the hot seat. Half an hour now, a couple of hours next time, half a day after that? Don’t ever do that again. And don’t yell at my kids, either. Even if we are a bunch of bloody amateurs.”

George looked caught out: as embarrassed as he ever looked. “Ah,” he said. “I didn’t intend you to feel yourself included.”

“Why not?” Gerard did smile then. “Like I told Will. I’ve never done this before. And no one’s paying me to do it. You’re the only pro in this crowd.”

George nodded: embarrassed, amused, and caught playing protector. He finished his tea, set the cup down, and said “And with regard to the new cases?”

“Yeah, we should look through them. The files are all on the other side.” Gerard stood up, and grinned widely. “I’ll tell anyone who asks that’s what you came for.”

“No one will ask.”

George was gone in two hours. Richard had been lying flat on the floor of the holding cell, Gerard guessed, for at least part of the time; it wasn’t a quick position to rise from when Gerard came in.

“Relax,” Gerard said: “We’re going out for a walk.” He let Richard out ahead of him, and down the stairs: in the hall, Richard paused, looking back at him,

“Round the house,” Gerard said. “It’s not raining.”

Fresh air and exercise. If the armoury was locked down, and two people were willing to supervise, Richard could use the gym. If no one was working in the lounge, Richard could watch DVDs on the TV.

“We were real busy this past week,” Gerard said. “You should get to go out more. Remind me if I forget.” Giving Richard more than he needed in order to be able to take what he didn’t need away from him was the only way to punish him: that or kill him. And it certainly seemed like he were going to need ways to punish Richard.

Richard’s eyes went to the wired wall around the garden the moment he stepped outside: he looked at Gerard only after he took hold of Richard’s wrist.

The death the wall would give was the death Commerce would give its convict slaves. Gerard had warned Richard of it in explicit terms, to keep him away from the wall: but it seemed to fascinate Richard. Gerard didn’t think it was a rabbit fascinated by a snake: Richard was not prey. Gerard kept a firm grip on his wrist as they walked, twice, around the house.

“Sit down there,” Gerard said, pointing at the sofa. “Pick something you want to watch.”

Richard looked at him, He still didn’t speak, but his face could be very expressive, and what it was expressing was You’re kidding me.

“The hell,” Gerard said, answering the look. “Just do as you’re told, OK? And try speaking. I told you about that.”

“Yes, Sam,” Richard said, and sat down, leaning sideways to look at the shelf where Gerard kept the British DVDs.

Ordering a new mattress for the holding cell – and a sleeping mat, that could be rolled up and put away, for Gerard’s bedroom – took all of ten minutes. Richard had three DVDs on the table in front of him.

Two were from the British collection: Eddie Izzard, that was Giles, and All Creatures Great and Small, that was Adam. One was from the regular shelves: an approved remake of Casablanca that came out two years ago that someone had given him as a joke of sorts: Sam the piano player was Rick’s body slave.

Gerard picked up the last, staring at Richard, glancing down at the blurb on the back. Richard looked back at him, completely expressionless. If he’d done it on purpose, he wasn’t giving anything away. Impossible to prove, one way or another, without an interrogation as humiliating for Gerard as it would be agonising for Richard, over a damn DVD.

Not a game Gerard intended to play. He reshelved it and glanced at the other two: British comedy of the kind Giles liked, and some kind of show about a Yorkshire vet. “Okay. Put that on.”

He sat down on the sofa. When Richard had put the DVD in the player, Gerard patted the sofa beside him. “Sit down,” he said, as Richard hesitated.

Richard sat on the edge of the sofa; Gerard took hold of his arm and pulled him back, settling him to lean against his shoulder. “Get comfortable. Let’s watch this.” He had two hours to spare and there was no game on: this wouldn’t have been his choice of ways to spend them, but there were worse ones.

Richard, tense for a while, eventually relaxed: not all at once, but as if it was too difficult to keep holding himself rigidly still. The show wasn’t bad, either.

The phone rang just as a new episode was starting. “Yeah, this is Gerard.”

The voice was Commerce. “This is the department of fugitives, Mr Gerard.” They never identified themselves by name, only by office. “A household in DeKalb reports two slaves have absconded.”

“What?” Gerard let go of Richard and stood up.

“They went missing since midnight and eight o’clock this morning. We believe their collars may have been removed.”

The slaves could have been stolen – collars would be the first thing to go - or they could have got them removed themselves, if they knew how, thinking it would make it harder to track them.

“You have been informed as a courtesy. We do not believe we will require the assistance of the US Marshal’s service to retrieve the fugitives.”

“Send me over everything you’ve got on the household and the slaves. All of them,” Gerard said.

“Certainly, Mr Gerard. The fugitives will be rendered to you after capture.”

“Sure they will,” Gerard said out loud, after the connection was cut. Richard was staring up at him. There was no time. All his kids were on speed-dial from his phone.

“Adam,” Gerard said. “We got two runners. They started from DeKalb, they’ve had up to sixteen hours start. I want you and Giles to get out there. I want these two found, I want them here.”

He had the same conversation with Giles, and closed the connection, looking down at Richard. There had to be time to deal with this. The point of having a canary was to keep the canary visible: Richard was of no use kept in the holding cell. Gerard had been OK with that as a temporary measure when he thought it was keeping Richard calmed down. But long-term, it didn’t do. “Stay where you are,” Gerard said. He went back to his laptop.

The material on the household and on the slaves, with the files on the two who had run, had already been sent over in a set of large, indigestible, and locked files. Material information would have to be retrieved and sent to Giles and Adam: George was busy on the next set of Commerce files. Dana, Ray, and Benton were all due Saturday at least off if they were going to be functional, and Willow was going to be needed –

“Richard.”

Richard stood up, turning, staring, wide-eyed.

“I don’t want to lock you in your room for the next few hours, but I can put you in leg-irons where you are. Or if you sit where you are with earphones in and don’t say one goddamn word and don’t move, I don’t have to do that either.”

Richard’s voice was rusty and shaking. “I’d rather you locked me in my room.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want, do you?” tbc

The Gambler - Part 3

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:31:51 GMT

This is the third part of the third story (first part, second part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Three

Richard was still asleep. Gerard considered going downstairs to start breakfast. He did a mental coin-flip, and it came down tails. He put his hand on Richard’s shoulder, on the blanket covering it, and pressed down, moving his thumb firmly from pectoral to collarbone.

Richard’s eyes opened like a window. He stared up at Gerard, and a familiar expression seemed to fall over his face, changing its cast like a shadow on the sun.

“You awake, Richard?”

Richard swallowed, licked his lips, and his mouth twitched. “Yes, Sam.”

“Wanted to let you know. I’m not sending you back to the arena. We’re gonna have sex, shower, then have breakfast, before it’s time for lunch.”

Richard nodded. He didn’t move.

“Okay. Get up here.”

After a moment, Richard sat up. He left his blanket behind on the floor, and climbed on to the bed naked. He wasn’t turned on. Gerard figured, actually, he hadn’t seen anyone quite that unaroused since the last time he’d had to share a cold shower. Richard kept his eyes fixed firmly on Gerard’s face, as if he were trying to ignore Gerard’s nakedness.

It was easy enough to arrange Richard: as last time they’d done this, though his breathing was effortful and he seemed heavy-limbed, he didn’t resist at all. Gerard settled himself against the headboard, with Richard against him, one arm round Richard’s shoulders, the other hand free to explore.

Richard didn’t say a word. He had evidently been trying to keep looking at Gerard’s face: when Gerard had him settled, his head tilted back against Gerard’s shoulder, he was shivering, his face passive, but his mouth twitched again in half a smile.

“Okay,” Gerard said. “Let’s get some shit cleared up. I don’t plan on hurting you. I am not a guy who gets off on that. Relax. Let’s talk. How’s the head?”

Richard looked momentarily, very startled.

“Come on. Talk to me. How’s your head feel?”

“It’s … it’s fine.”

“You woke me up,” Gerard said. “Last night was going to be the first time I got to sleep for eight hours straight in a week. I would not have been happy with you for waking me up, but what got me mad enough to push you through a wall was…”
What the hell are you wasting time for? His free hand had fastened on Richard’s upper arm. What if he’d leaked about last night’s delivery? He wanted to hurt Richard: he should not, must not. Quite deliberately, he loosened his grip, spread his hand, slid his fingers through Richard’s chest hair to touch his nipples, circling each one with as gentle and precise a touch as his control could achieve. He glanced at Richard’s face, smiled deliberately. “Nice.”

Richard’s face was passive again. But he wasn’t shivering.

“Well, I thought you were planning to run, Richard. And I was pretty goddamn tired, and that made me mad.”

Gerard paused. He was thinking. His hand was still on Richard’s chest. He wanted to say something like I’m sorry I gave your head a whack like that, but what could he say? He had the right to knock Richard about. To hit him harder than he’d hit Richard last night. To beat seven kinds of crap out of him if he felt like it, just because he felt like it. And they both knew it. He would hit Richard again, if he had to, if he thought he had to. Apologies just didn’t sound right, under those circumstances.

“All you wanted was to sleep beside the bed instead of on it, and you could have had that without getting me mad if you’d asked me before I went to sleep. So next time, ask.” He was looking Richard directly in the face, and when Richard tried to look away, he put a hand out to stop him. “You’re my property. I’m a guy who takes care of what’s his. I want cooperation from you. Are you paying attention to me?”

Richard’s mouth twitched again. “Yes, Sam.”

There was a lot more that could be said. Gerard decided not to get it said then. There was a pure kind of absurdity in having sex with Richard right now: Richard was completely unaroused, and Gerard wasn’t turned on at all: all the attention he could spare for his libido involved spending all his time really not getting turned on by the idea of hurting Richard. A pure kind of absurdity and a real bright line: Gerard hadn’t thought about it at all last Saturday, too full of planning about what to do with the canary, but this was the first time he was sure of, in his life, that he was about to have sex with someone whom he knew hadn’t and wouldn’t consent to it.

“Okay,” Gerard said. He dropped his hand to Richard’s chest again, feeling a ridiculous impulse to say Let’s go or, worse yet, Get comfortable – we’ll be here for a while.
Richard had a nice growth of chest hair. Gerard spent several minutes running his hand through it, all the way across and around, down as far as his belly, enjoying the way it felt against his palm and fingers: Richard’s nipples tightened smoothly under Gerard’s seeking tingertips.

“Good,” Gerard said out loud.

“What do you want me to do?” Richard asked.

Gerard looked at Richard’s face again.He’d liked this: it was dull but it was …nice. There was no particular rush and no immediate goal: he was free to spend minutes exploring the texture of Richard’s chest hair versus armpit hair, to test the sensitivity of right nipple over left, palming Richard’s belly and circling his navel. It had felt almost like being a normal person, with a normal safe life, in bed with his boyfriend on a Saturday morning…

Well, aside from the convict collar round Richard’s throat. And the lack of expression on Richard’s face. And the way Richard was lying passively, his hands almost unmoving, only twitching sometimes when Gerard found a sensitive spot. What do you want? What do you want to do? Do what the hell you want! He’d have said that to almost anyone he was in bed with: he couldn’t say it to his property.

He could order Richard to touch him, of course. Yeah, that would work.

“Do what I’m doing,” Gerard said, for want of anything better to say.

What Gerard was doing, without any particular rush, was turning Richard on. And that was itself turning Gerard on: even this kind of dull safe sex was good enough for that. No rush, no pain, so surge of pleasure to break down barriers, just easy handling.

Richard’s hands on him were almost more of an annoyance than a turn-on: Richard wasn’t into this, but that was mattering less and less to Gerard, except that the awkwardness of Richard’s touch was not what he wanted: getting Richard helplessly turned on was the goal, and he was getting there. He had coaxed Richard to a shivering erection at last, and turned him easily then to nest his own hard cock between Richard’s thighs, keeping one hand firmly on Richard’s cock, his other arm holding Richard across his chest below his throat, nicely positioned to throttle if Richard fought back: he hadn’t, though when Gerard turned him he had heard a small, choked off sound of protest.

He’d have liked to fuck Richard’s ass. But this was good: easy, slow. Felt good. He could make Richard twitch and shiver with a touch. He liked that. Richard’s muscles were clenching up, his breath was coming harder and faster, and his hips were beginning to jerk and twitch involuntarily: Gerard grinned, feeling his mouth stretch wide in humourless pride and pleasure, his hand on Richard’s cock dancing him in a steady rhythm as Richard’s squirming pleasured him: he made Richard come, feeling the other man’s deep grunt of involuntary pleasure as much as hearing it, and then, not overwhelming but with a deep sense of release, Gerard came.

He could almost have gone to sleep again, holding Richard, breathing in the warm sweaty human smells of both their bodies joined. He did not, but the silence of the room, the sound of their breathing, was strangely peaceful; he didn’t have any impulse to move.

How often can you cross a bright line?

There really wasn’t anyone to ask.

Richard’s clean clothes were all over the floor of the holding cell: Gerard found him another couple of cartons from the last delivery of groceries, and stayed propped in the doorway to watch him clear them up. There had been too damn much letting Richard shut himself in here.

He was going to have to shut Richard up somewhere while George was here. Gerard thought about it.

“Richard.”

Richard’s hands stopped moving: he looked at Gerard.

“I’ve still got to shut you in here sometimes,” Gerard said. “From now on, you’re not going to be allowed in here unless someone lets you, OK?”

Richard nodded. He went back to rolling up his socks into pairs.

“I’ll order another mattress for in here.” Gerard leant his elbow against the doorway. “And something for you to sleep on through in my room, I guess.”

Richard looked up again. This time, he looked startled. He said nothing.

“Well, I’m fine with you sleeping with me,” Gerard said. “Just fine. But if you’re not going to wake me up at four in the morning when you crawl out of bed, you need something else to sleep on. Don’t you?” He paused. Richard said nothing. “I asked the arena management once, after I got to look through the dorms there on business, how come your guys are so quiet?”

Richard’s eyes seemed to get larger: an effect of pupil dilation. He hadn’t moved and the slightly startled expression on his face hadn’t changed. But if the eyes didn’t lie, he was as much in shock as he had been last night, right after Gerard had banged his head off the floor.

“Yeah, and they told me how they keep you quiet in there: they don’t beat you for making noise – talking or crying or screaming – they gag you. Between one shift and the next. You don’t get to talk, you don’t get to eat, you don’t get to drink. That ever happen to you, Richard?”

“Yes,” Richard said, after a moment. His voice was shaky.

“For talking?”

“Someone spoke to me.”

“They’ll gag you for that?”

“I didn’t report her,” Richard said. “I was new.”

“Ever happen to you again?”

“No.”

“Is that a bright line for you?” Gerard asked, without thinking about it: he was contemplating the implications of “I was new.”

Richard swallowed, hard. He was kneeling hunched up, hs hands together in front of him, his head tilted back up uncomfortably. His voice was wavery. “Yes, it is.”

“Right,” Gerard said. He stared down at Richard. On the one hand, he wanted to ask “How many times can you cross a bright line?”

On the other, what he’d planned to do was say something comforting. And his speaking without thinking about it had just sent Richard from a state of mild shock into a state of… tremor.

“Richard.”

Richard was already looking at him. More or less. He didn’t look away or change the direction of his gaze. He didn’t say anything.

“Jesus Christ,” Gerard said. He went over to drop neatly to a squat beside Richard, and began to finish what Richard had started. Rolling socks. After a moment, Richard began to work again, but his hands were trembling.

“Richard…”

You do what you have to do. You do things you never would have supposed you’d ever do. You cross a bright line you knew you’d never step over, but once you did it and you’re still alive, that’s something you know about yourself.

“After this, we’re gonna have something to eat,” Gerard said. “Okay?”

Richard kept his gaze on him. His face was set in a frown. His eyes still looked too dark. He nodded, without speaking.

“You get to talk,” Gerard said. “No one’s going to gag you for talking out of turn. Well, you get to talk to me, I still don’t want you bugging my kids. But I’m getting tired of the silenced voice routine, okay?”

Richard nodded. He seemed to catch himself, and said “Yes, Sam.” His voice shook.

The clothes were folded and back in cartons. Gerard said, finally, not knowing what else to say, “It’s not a crime to be able to live with yourself afterwards, Richard.”

He wasn’t even sure it was true. Not in his own field of action, at least. He thought that Richard looked at him oddly, but all Richard said was, again, “Yes, Sam.”

tbc

The Gambler – Part Two

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:54:46 GMT

This is the second part of the third story (first part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Two

It had been nearer two in the morning than one when Gerard went to sleep (warm solid bony body next to him) and he should have been able to sleep for eight solid hours, if nothing new woke him.

By the clock, it was just after four when Gerard woke. Four in the morning. He didn’t want to be awake but he undeniably wasn’t asleep. Richard was still lying next to him – still and quiet – and shouldn’t be any more wakeful than Gerard was. What the hell had woken him – ?

Richard had moved. Not stirring in his sleep, definitely conscious movement. Slowly, cautiously, evidently still thinking Gerard was asleep, Richard was trying to get away.

That first Sunday morning, Richard had done something like this, and had headed directly for the kitchen – had certainly been looking for knives, more likely for suicide than for murder. He’d tried to jump Gerard, he’d tried to fight – and then, by Sunday night, he seemed to have given up fighting. Seemed.

Through the week, Gerard had seen Richard’s cooperation – however resentful, however unwilling – as a sign of his eventual submission. Turned out none of that had been compliance, still less submission.

Nothing Richard did or said could be trusted or counted on. All of it had been in the service of Richard’s own agenda, and they were lucky that that this agenda had merely been insane.

Gerard was too tired even to think of cursing: he lay still, all his nerves on edge, wide-aware, a stream of wordless rage and hate flooding the back of his mind at Richard for making him wake up again.

Richard had reached the edge of the bed. Gerard waited: Richard hadn’t even sat up yet. Carefully, slowly, Richard slid himself over the edge of the bed, and must have gently settled himself to the floor. Gerard lay still a moment longer: he expected to hear Richard get up, or at least begin to move – did he think he’d be less conspicuous if he crawled out of the bedroom? – but nothing happened.

Gerard gathered himself and moved. Fast: he didn’t know what Richard had planned. He was standing poised for a fight, when he realised Richard was simply lying on the floor: had been curled up, protecting his face and belly, but was now twisted over, looking at Gerard. His face showed white in the dim light: expression was hard to read.

“What the hell?” Gerard took two long steps back to the nearest light control, and brought the lights up full, closing his eyes momentarily to avoid the dazzle. Richard was blinking and shaking his head when Gerard could see him again, and Gerard lunged. He was seriously beginning to believe he would kill Richard for a decent night’s uninterrupted sleep.

Richard convulsed, briefly, his face distorted in the dim light – “Son of a bitch!” Gerard snarled, the slave was trying to fight, but Gerard had leverage and weight, he was kneeling on Richard, and the man could not throw him off. What if he’d leaked about tonight’s delivery? Gerard grabbed Richard by the ears and jerked his head up to bring the back of his skull down against the carpet, a moment’s sanity keeping himself from too much force – enough to daze, not concuss.

“Now you listen to me,” Gerard said. He was gripped with rage and exhaustion. He felt all the weight that had rolled off him when Adam and Ray and Benton came in the door unharmed had piled right back on. “I am tired. I am not in a good mood. Are you paying attention to me now, Richard?”

Richard gasped and nodded. He was shaking violently, but no longer struggling.

“I want an answer from you. Now.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Yes,” Richard said.

Gerard bent close. “Where the hell did you think you were going?”

“Nowhere,” Richard said.

“The hell?”

“Nowhere,” Richard repeated, as if the problem was that Gerard might not have understood him.

“You were getting out of bed in the middle of the night to go nowhere?”

“I didn’t know I’d wake you…” Richard’s voice trailed off, evidently seeing that was not the best thing to say to Gerard right now. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Just getting out of bed so you could lie on the floor?” Gerard kept his hand from slapping Richard’s face: he was not confident he could hold the blow. “Try again.”

Richard stared up at him. He looked completely beaten. “I can’t,” he said. His voice was dazed and shaking. “You’re going to send me back there. I don’t – I’m not going anywhere, I know I’m not going anywhere. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t know I’d wake you. I wouldn’t have left the room, I knew that would wake you. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“What were you trying to do? Go to the john?” A man moved by that need wouldn’t try to crawl, wouldn’t try to get there surreptitiously.

“No. I …” Richard made a noise as if he was choking. “I wanted … to lie on the floor. I thought I could sleep. If I wasn’t on the bed.”

“With me?” Gerard frowned.

“Last time when I woke up I thought I was home,” Richard said. He sounded almost wandering, indescribably lost and weary. “I didn’t want to sleep…” his voice trailed off. “I thought I was home,” he said again.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Gerard said, seeing it suddenly. Richard hadn’t slept in an ordinary bed, with a mattress and sheets and blankets, since… the night of his arrest. Or the night before his arrest. He stared down at Richard. Except that night nearly a week ago. Waking in an ordinary bed, with a companion to share it, not the half-nightmare life of white boxes and blood for a slave in the arena but ordinary rooms and what must seem like ordinary days: Richard was in shock.

He’s not one of my kids.

No. But he’s mine.

“Okay.” He slid a hand behind Richard’s head, checking it over: there was going to be a bump there where Richard’s skull had thumped against the carpet. “Okay. Stay where you are.” He got up. “Can you take aspirin?”

Richard stared up at him. He nodded.

“Good.” Gerard brought four aspirin and a toothglass of water, and made Richard sit up and swallow the aspirin: he did, obediently enough, staring at Gerard in apparently-complete bewilderment. There was space on the side of the bed Gerard usually slept on, between bed and wall, and a spare comforter and two blankets tucked away at the back of the closet: Gerard folded the three together to make a kind of padding, roughly Richard’s length and width, and made a trip to the holding cell to retrieve the blanket. It took less than five minutes, start to finish, and Richard was still sitting there, staring, looking so dazed that Gerard would have thought he was concussed except he knew he hadn’t hit hard enough for that.

“Okay. Lie down here.” Gerard flipped the blanket over him. “Let me know if that doesn’t work.” I can’t believe I said that. Don’t wake me up to let me know. Just – “Go to sleep.”

He lay down himself, Richard at least within arm’s length, and at a thought, picked up his phone and shoved it under his pillow. He had been tired before. He hoped to hell Richard could sleep now.

Gerard woke, lazily, not long after ten: Richard was still asleep on the improvised mat beside the bed. Still there, still asleep, which was better than last Sunday. Gerard sat up and looked at him. Richard slept on, the blanket huddled round his shoulders, his feet poking out the bottom.

I didn’t kill my wife, Richard had told him. A one-armed man did it, he’d told the police, according to his arrest record, but this was an invisible man, that none of the staff had seen, no one had found any evidence of, no one believed existed. This defense hadn’t even used it at the trial: there was no evidence any stranger had been in the house.

But Richard had evidently convinced himself the man existed. Richard had expended almost all the communication time he’d so recklessly stolen, at such risk to himself, on locating – and apparently making phone calls to – a large selection of the one-armed men on Cook County Hospital’s medical records: Dana said that Cook County Hospital saw pretty much every amputee in Northern Illinois, certainly every one in Chicago.

That was okay. Gerard didn’t need Richard to be sane. Either about his murder of his wife, or about anything else. But he did need Richard to be willing to lie down next to him and let him get a night’s sleep. And he didn’t want to have to beat Richard into submission every night. Any night. He just wanted Richard to give in.

Last time when I woke up I thought I was home.

Gerard rolled over on to his stomach, leaning on the edge of the bed, and contemplated Richard from close up. He was handsome enough to have been a trophy husband for Lady Helen Waverley: his distinguished career might have pushed him into the ranks of entitlement even without his wife’s money and family status. All cut off because, in rage, jealousy, hurt, greed – no one was ever likely to know, probably Richard himself couldn’t remember any more – he had decided to kill his wife. It might not have been quite the impulse of the moment, but it evidently hadn’t been done with much time to plan. The events of the past week seemed to demonstrate that for a smart guy, Richard was quite capable of taking really stupid risks. Maybe because he believed he’d get away with it. Maybe because he just didn’t give a shit.

Maybe given a few days to cool down, Richard would have been smart enough not to kill his wife. But again, who knew how badly Doctor Kimble had wanted his wife’s money?

Last time when I woke up I thought I was home. It was like being in a nightmare. But I couldn’t wake up.

Gerard propped his chin on his hand. What he could see of Richard’s face, half-hidden by blanket and hair, was more relaxed than Gerard had ever seen it. And last night was the first time he could remember that Richard had actually talked, more than five words at time. When he’d decided they needed a canary, he had been looking for a convict who had committed a single murder and had been condemned to the collar for it; criminal justice statistics from outside USNA suggested that a person who had killed one person they knew well was the least likely of all murderers to kill again – less likely to commit another murder than someone who had never killed. Criminal justice statistics inside USNA were too deeply affected by the distortion of slavery to be worth much.

Buying from the arena, so that Gerard could say he’d picked out a convict as a bodyslave because he’d been attracted by their looks – and let anyone who liked suppose that the danger was part of the attraction – had seemed like the best kind of cover story, one that arranged itself. And Richard had been available. Maybe Richard had been sane when he was sent there. But after three years sorting bodies in the triage room, knowing what was outside the doors, would anyone be sane? Maybe you had to believe in something to get through that alive, and Richard had chosen to believe in the one-armed man.

You’re going to send me back there.

Yeah, he’d told Richard he would. That first morning. Pull a stunt on his team, send him back to the arena. He’d been thinking of Richard attacking one of them – well, hell, specifically, he’d been worried about Dana or Willow. Willow was just a kid, and Dana was cool enough with a gun but not much of an ace at close-quarters fighting. Benton was soft enough to let Richard get the drop on him, but good defensively and hard enough if anyone wanted to hurt Ray; Ray and Giles and Adam were all pretty good close-in fighters, and George was just plain scary.

Gerard didn’t care if Richard was uncomfortable around every person on the team except for Gerard himself: and the stunt Richard had pulled on them this week had pretty much guaranteed that they weren’t going to like him much. Richard was too bright for a simple good-cop/bad-cop routine to work well… but anyone, no matter how smart they were, was vulnerable to living in isolation with only one source of comfort. That was how Gerard had figured this would work, and how it could still work, if Richard were convinced he couldn’t pull any more stunts like this one.

tbc

The Players: Giles

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:12:28 GMT

This is part seven (the last part) of the second section of the story (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five. part six) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo. I also updated the cast list here.

The Players: Giles

Ray Vecchio had once offered a kind of meant-to-be-friendly sympathy to Giles, that the recruit Gerard had really wanted was Willow Rosenberg. It was impossible to explain that Giles had been trained all his life to be support for someone capable of doing things he could not.

But when George Cowley rang up at twenty five minutes past six in the morning to wake Giles so that Giles could drive Willow to Gerard’s house, so that Willow could rewrite a report that Cowley wasn’t happy with, – that got Giles a little irked.

“I love it when you use words like ‘irked’,” Willow said.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I nearly am. Oh, there’s Krispy Kreme. Can we stop for doughnuts?”

“No.”

The lounge door was firmly closed. No one was in the armoury when they racked their guns. Dana was eating breakfast in the kitchen with Adam, and Richard was sitting still, arms folded, head down.

“Where is George?”

“In the lounge with Sam,” Adam said. “Why are you here so early?”

“George wanted us, supposedly.”

Adam raised his eyebrows. “Another exciting day of checking Commerce reports and contacts.”

“Something like that,” Giles agreed.

“Hard to stay awake.” Adam was looking at Richard.

“There’s always coffee,” Willow said brightly.

“Wonderful,” Giles said.

Dana yawned. “I’m going to bed. Tell Sam I’ll be awake again about noon.”

Gerard appeared in the doorway. He was smiling. He looked exhausted, Giles noted. “Yeah, you get some rest, Dana. We’re going to need you later. Willow, George is in the lounge, he’ll explain what we need from you. Giles, thanks for driving Willow here.” He put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Come on, Richard, on your feet.”

Through the week, Richard had been cooperative – if silent – about fetching coffee and food, and clearing away empty plates and mugs.

The report that Giles had thought was finished with got argued over apparently line by line: Dana joined in once she woke up again, and Cowley left them to it for an hour or so. Reading Commerce reports and checking contacts with Adam, Giles watched Willow and the others more often than his eye was drawn to Gerard at his desk, Richard sitting on the floor with his head back against the wall, in Gerard’s field of vision. But as far as he could tell, Richard never moved.

During a break that he and Adam took in the gym, Giles asked: “Of course one doesn’t want to engage in prurient speculation, but… do you have any idea why Richard isn’t being as cooperative today?”

“Prurient speculation is my favourite thing,” Adam said. “Right after beer. But there’s not a lot to speculate about.”

“Well, one presumes Gerard is…”

“One would, wouldn’t one?” Adam was amused. “One would be wrong. Every night this week that I’ve been awake to hear it, Richard gets shut in the holding cell for the night. By himself.”

“Oh,” Giles said, and then, feeling himself rewriting a lot of assumptions, “Oh.”

“But this morning, before I came downstairs for breakfast, Richard asked Sam if he could stay in the holding cell all day. Said he was tired. Benton and Ray said he sounded really exhausted.”

“Oh.”

“And Gerard said no. Told me to keep Richard awake during his meeting with George. Sam’s been keeping him awake all day.”

The prisoners: Giles had not seen them arrive, and did not see them leave. Three freight cartons with living contents. Dana had doped them “With something better than they arrived”. A larger carton with five dead bodies, three acquired by Ray and Benton, sent direct to the local disposal unit for slave and animal corpses. Adam, Benton, and Ray were the escorts.

Richard had never been told about the prisoners. Giles wondered if he could feel the the tension in the room, if he couldn’t understand what it was about.

Cowley was the only one in the room even making a pretense at working: his laptop was open on his knees, and his hands moved over the keyboard, though he was clearly not writing anything: , just like everyone else’s, his gaze kept drifting off the screen to stare at Gerard, where he sat with Richard on the floor at his feet.

Gerard’s phone rang. Giles leaned back, consciously telling himself that all was well. Gerard picked the phone up, and barked “Gerard. Yeah. Yeah.” A pause. “Good work. Get home safe.” He clicked the phone off, and said to the room at large, “Pick-up made, they’re all okay.”

Giles took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He was smiling. Beside him, Willow literally bounced: Giles felt the couch go up and down. Across the room, Dana leant her head back and stretched her arms and was grinning a wide tired smile. Cowley tapped his keyboard three times, but then shut down his laptop and sat still, his eyes on Gerard.

“God damn,” Gerard said. “Dana, you want a drink?”

“Sure,” Dana said. “A big one.”

The printer in the corner of the room began, almost silently, to run. Cowley stood up. “Sam, I think Richard should go to his room, don’t you?”

“What?” Gerard was pouring bourbon into a glass with a generous hand. His voice gave the word more syllables than it should have. “Anyone else want to send Richard upstairs?” He handed Dana the glass. “Well done, Doctor.” He glanced round. “Any of you other bastards want a drink?”

“I think he should go,” Cowley said, and Gerard looked at him.

“Okay,” Gerard said, after a moment. “Okay. Take him upstairs. Don’t go to sleep, Richard.”

Giles was startled when Cowley tapped him on the shoulder as he passed, but he got up and followed them out.

“What – ?” he asked, but Cowley had already, with smooth expertise, turned Richard, pulled his arms behind him, and snapped cuffs around Richard’s wrists. “What?”

“I’m not happy with the security here,” Cowley said. “Richard’s going to a secure cell through the security wall. I’ll discuss this with Sam later.”

Richard hadn’t even struggled. He was standing in the grip of the cuffs, with Cowley’s hand gripping his upper arm.

“You’re not going to leave him in handcuffs?” Giles asked. There was something appalling about the way Richard was standing in them.

“Not if he’s a good boy. Come on, let’s go.”

“Sam said – ”

“I know what he said. I’ll discuss it with him later.”

The nearest ground floor holding cell was in the corridor off the second security door. It hadn’t been used in weeks: it was completely bare. Giles opened the doors for Cowley to escort Richard through: he expected Cowley to take off the cuffs, as Richard seemed perfectly compliant, but Cowley stepped back and slammed the door shut again.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“What?” Giles stood still by the cell door. “He hasn’t done anything.” Cowley was walking away down the corridor. “George, we can at least take the cuffs off!”

Cowley turned round and stopped. His face was cold. “I lied,” he said. “Come on.”

Through in the lounge, Cowley picked up the papers from the printer, and handed them to Gerard.

“Take a look, sir.” His voice was as cold as his face.

“What?” But Gerard was looking at the sheets, his face intent, frowning,

“We had a leak,” Cowley told the rest of them. “On Deputy Gerard’s instructions, I pulled the phone records and the record of Internet access from this house, and examined all of them. Doctor Scully, your iPhone was used to make four hours worth of calls yesterday afternoon to numbers with no possible relevance to your work. Miss Rosenberg, your laptop has been used in Internet searches yesterday morning and Tuesday afternoon that were not related to the work you should have been doing.”

Willow’s eyes were wide: her skin looked white as ash. Giles opened his mouth to protest Cowley’s bullying tone, and was cut off.

“Mr Giles, your phone was made use of four times between Monday afternoon and Thursday morning to numbers I consider suspicious.” Cowley added, “Fraser and Vecchio’s phone and iPhone have also been made use of, as has Pierson’s laptop. Deputy Gerard, you wanted to know who was responsible for the leak, and my report to you is that it was this bunch of bloody amateurs.”

Gerard’s hands clenched into fists, scrumpling the paper. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “It was Richard.” His voice held a depth of rage.

“He played us for fools,” Cowley said. “He played us for bloody idiots! We let him roam the house unescorted while he fetched us coffee and sandwiches and picked up dishes, and you all left your laptops and your phones and your iPhones lying about for him to pick up and make use of at will. He has had practically unrestricted communication with the outside world for the past five days, and we didn’t even guess it.”

Giles sat down. He wanted to kill something – slowly, and Richard would do, if they had to run, if there was nothing left –

“What,” Gerard said – Giles thought he looked grey – “What the hell are you wasting time for? Who has he been in communication with, and what can he have told them?”

Cowley shook his head. “We’ve been lucky. Doctor Richard Kimble spent his time trying to get back into the hospital nets. I checked the numbers he called. Unless he was deliberately placed here as a mole with safe numbers to call – which I do not believe is at all likely – I think he was concerned with communicating with his world, not with leaking secrets out of ours.”

“You think?” Gerard’s voice bit. His teeth showed in a snarl. “You think, do you? It was your job to tell me as soon as you knew what he was doing – What if he’d leaked about tonight’s delivery?”

“If he had, by the time I knew the extent of what had happened, it was too late to save the delivery – or any of us,” Cowley said. His voice was colder than anything Giles had heard. “And if he hadn’t, it’s too big a risk to cancel. As soon as I knew the foreign delivery had been made and our packages collected, I knew we were right originally in assessing that the threat-level from this security breach was low. But we need to eliminate it, and for future reference, sir, if you think of buying another canary, make sure the next one can’t sing.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gerard said. He sat down.

“Sam?” Willow said, in a small voice.

“What?” Gerard said, after a pause. The word was a snarl.

Giles glanced at her. Willow looked appallingly young and fragile and scared.

“I’m sorry about my laptop,” Willow said. Her voice shook. “Really sorry. But – ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gerard said. “Done’s done.” He sounded beyond exhausted. “Don’t waste my time.”

“I meant – can I see the records? Maybe I can figure out what Richard told – find out who he talked to?”

“Yeah,” Gerard said, after a moment. “Probably a good idea. George. Give her the shit. Where did you put Richard?”

“In a secure holding cell. In cuffs.” Cowley’s voice was hard on the word secure.

“Yeah,” Gerard said, slowly. “What the hell. Did you tell him why he was going in?”

“’I’m not happy with the security here,’” Cowley quoted himself.

“That’s all?” Gerard looked at Giles.

“That’s it,” Giles said. “I had no idea what was going on.”

“Yeah,” Gerard said. “And you leave your phone lying about, too.”

Dana had taken her iPhone out and was looking at it. “Sam?”

“What?”

“How could he possibly have expected to get away with it?”

“Well, he did, didn’t he?” Gerard dropped his head to his hands and began to massage his forehead.

“But he wouldn’t,” Dana said. “He didn’t. He didn’t wipe the browser. I didn’t look up these medical records at Cook County Hospital. I wouldn’t have known about the phone calls until I looked up my billing record, but I would have seen this as soon as I opened the browser again – ” She looked across at Willow. “He didn’t even try to cover his tracks.”

“No,” Willow said. She sounded much more confident. “He really didn’t. We would have known about what he was doing …by Sunday, anyway. I would have noticed when I scanned my computer then.”

“And what the hell use would that have been?” Gerard dropped his hands and looked up, glancing from one to the other. He stood up. “Okay. Willow, you find out what he looked at, how long he spent looking at it, what his exit and entrance points were, everything about his activities on the Internet over the past five days. Pass all the hospital information on to Dana. Dana, you figure out for me who Richard was communicating with and why. Giles, I want you to search the upstairs holding cell. Take everything in it to pieces if you have to. George … I need IDs on those phone numbers.”

It was past eleven at night, a day that had started before seven, Willow looked shattered, and Giles did not feel the least inclined to start taking apart the holding cell. “Fine. But why do we have to do this tonight?”

Gerard looked at him. “Got a better time?”

“Is there any reason why this shouldn’t wait till tomorrow morning?”

“Because I said so, Giles, you need a better reason?”

Giles was on his feet, and it felt as if his head had gone incandescent. “You started this! You bought yourself a man to use as a – a dangerous dildo! You let him roam around this house! You – let your gonads make you stupid – and when it goes wrong you let him – ” Giles jerked his hand at Cowley – “blame us and you make Willow cry!”

The main reason that Giles tried to avoid losing his temper was that it always seemed to leave him standing by himself in the middle of the floor with his mouth going dry, feeling like an idiot.

“Okay,” Gerard said.

Giles took his glasses off. It was an instinctive move when he expected to have a fight. “Okay?”

“Yeah, Giles. Okay. Put your glasses back on.”

Without thinking, Giles obeyed, and Gerard was standing far too close. “

“Yeah, I started this. Yeah, I let Richard have the run of this house. Turns out we should have had a conversation about ground rules for laptops and phones as well as guns, and we didn’t, and that was my mistake as well as yours. But my gonads do not make me stupid, and Jesus Christ, ‘dangerous dildo’?” Gerard stepped back. “But, okay. Here’s a good reason why you’re going to go upstairs and search the holding cell, besides because I said so: until you do, I’ve got to leave Richard in cuffs in a secure cell on the other side of the house.”

Giles stared. “But surely you’re going to kill him?” The question came out without second thought. He heard Willow make a noise behind him – the same kind of appalled noise she’d made the first time she’d seen him kill someone.

“No,” Gerard said, shaking his head. He was smiling joylessly. “I bought him for my own good reasons, and those reasons are still good. I’m keeping him.”

End of The Players

The first section of the next part, The Gambler begins as soon as I have part 2 written.

The Players: George

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:53:56 GMT

This is part six of the second section (seven parts) of the story (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: George

Eight years and nine months residence had not greatly changed George Cowley’s opinion of the United States of North America. Except, at moments like these, for the worse.

“You do know that these are not actual interrogations?” Gerard was tapping the print-out against his knee. He looked tired and sounded bad-tempered, but it was not long after six in the morning. “Willow and Adam had no access to the subjects of the report.”

Cowley waited before he spoke: when he was angry, getting the words right was an effort. “I’m fully aware of that, Sam, but they did have access to the company and Commerce files on these subjects. Willow is a very good data analyst. So is Adam. I am asking you to consider the possibility that Willow may have got it right.”

“And if she did?”

“Consider the situation this report outlines, Sam. They have no contact with the outside world. We took it as read that meant they have no connections we need to protect.”

“Yeah,” Gerard said. He was frowning.

“But they have connections with each other. This company owns nearly two million people.”

“Not in any one location,” Gerard said.

“How important is that, if they can communicate between company sites?”

“These five came from the same site.”

“But different workgangs. The workgangs are moved around the company as a unit.” With an effort, Cowley pulled himself away from arguing details. “I think we need to see this as a network that deserves our protection.”

Gerard sat in silence for a while, staring past Cowley. Gerard was not, in Cowley’s estimation, a quick thinker where abstracts were concerned: he reacted lightning-fast only when he had something concrete or definite to respond to. It was infuriating and frustrating not to be able to snap out an order, but it was something Cowley had known he would have to get used to, years ago: and had, for the most part.

“Well,” Gerard said. “Say you’re right. Let me clarify the position here. We promised Commerce we would give them a whole stack of information on these five subjects. We got the information. Now you say it’s too good to give them. Maybe so. But long term, what’s the effect if we give them a report that’s got nothing? Are they going to send us their subjects again?”

“We’ve never given up a major network in the past.”

“No.” Gerard was still not looking at Cowley. “We’ve always been able to give them something else to keep them happy. We’ve got nothing here except…” he tapped the paper against his knee, “…what we do have.”

“When do you have to send them this report?”

“I was planning on sending it today,” Gerard said. “Soon as Dana can fill in the details of how each of our subjects died.”

“Give me a day. Let me work with Willow on this. If we can’t amend this – ”

“You’re still going to fight me on this,” Gerard cut in. He was looking at Cowley again, and he was amused. “Yeah. How close to the edge do you think we are?”

“I think we’ll be twenty years further off if you send in this report as it is.”

“Okay.” Gerard’s gaze was steady, assessing. “You and Willow can have till tomorrow morning.”

Cowley nearly bit his tongue. He had another persuasive speech planned, which didn’t seem necessary. He knew what any of Gerard’s other people would have said: a grateful, even awed, Thank you, Sam. Gerard was his superior officer, the line of command was clear: it would have been much easier to nod a polite “Thank you, sir,” than it was to say, aware he hardly sounded grateful, “Thank you, Sam.”

“Call her in right now,” Gerard added. “You had breakfast?” He stood up. “I need coffee. Let’s eat before Ray and Benton wake up. It’s gonna be a full house, again. And I need to talk to you after breakfast about this e-mail I got last night. It can wait till I’ve had coffee, though.”

Giles answered the phone. He sounded, if possible, in a worse temper than Gerard: but he conceded they could be at the house in an hour.

When Gerard came downstairs again he had Richard in tow. Literally in tow; he was holding him by the wrist, as if he thought Richard would get away. The man showed no sign of wanting to escape. He stumbled along beside Gerard, looking simply not quite there. When Gerard pushed him at the table where Cowley sat drinking tea and eating toast, Richard sat down without ever lifting his head.

Cowley couldn’t remember ever having been much angrier with Gerard when he’d thought Richard had been bought as some kind of dangerous sex toy. Buying a person – buying a dangerous convicted criminal – to keep as property would have irritated him to a vast degree of annoyance no matter who had done it, but for his commanding officer to do it, at this critical juncture when so much depended on him – that, had driven him to real fury. In principle, according to the terms of the agreement the British Government had made with the US Marshals service nine years ago, Cowley was Gerard’s replacement if Gerard were killed or taken: but in all honesty, Cowley knew, he could never hold this disparate group together. Gerard had chosen them: as Gerard’s team, they worked. For anyone else, they would fall apart.

The overtones of that anger were still there when he looked at Richard. Gerard had not bought him out of simple lust. There was a tactical reason behind his purchase, Cowley was certain now, and Gerard wouldn’t want to share it till he was sure it would work – and if it never did, Gerard would dispose of Richard and never share the reason why. Cowley drank his tea. Humanely, of course. The humour tasted sour in his mouth. Richard Kimble was a murderer: execute him or send him to gaol for life, Cowley would not quarrel with either one, but this endlessly-drawn-out game of three years here and six months there, was… unnecessary.

The story about the governor was probably true, too. The requirement to own a slave had been getting more and more stringently enforced over the defined sufficient income level. Even over the past eight years, Cowley had noticed the change. About the only way to escape it now was to live somewhere literally too small for a slave to be fitted in, and to deliberately lose enough money each month by some legitimate means (gambling was good: as was heavy drinking, drugs taken… charity wasn’t favoured) in case the IRS began to look at you. Sam Gerard had managed the trick of not owning a slave without arousing suspicion for a long time, but no one could do it forever.

And maybe, Cowley thought, watching Gerard put a plate of food down in front of Richard and shove a mug of coffee into his hand, there was something of simple lust in it as well. Insofar as lust was ever simple: Cowley had never found it so.

“You’re going to eat it, Richard,” Gerard said. He sat down with his own plate of food, and glanced at Cowley. “Yesterday, with eight other people in the house, all of them eating at regular intervals, Richard managed to get by on a bagel and a bowl of soup till we had supper.”

Cowley shrugged. “When I was a boy, the usual problem the lads in my street had with keeping rabbits was that sooner or later, they’d forget to feed them.” He kept his voice at polite disinterest. There had been twelve people in the house yesterday, and if Cowley had any doubts about why he was here, he only had to look at the last three. “There was something else you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah.” Gerard eyed Cowley. “There is. It can wait. What d’you think about the Cubs chances this season?”

“About the same as you do about Rangers winning the cup,” Cowley retorted.

Gerard laughed. He began to talk, looking at Cowley, about a string of baseball trivia: players exchanged, games won and lost, weather and strike action. Gerard intended what he was saying for Richard, Cowley realised: and the man was eating as he listened. Cowley held his peace.

Vecchio and Fraser came downstairs together while Richard was still finishing off the last of the food on his plate. Gerard put more coffee on to brew. “Get Adam, will you?” he said to Cowley.

Pierson was getting dressed when Cowley knocked on his door. When they came downstairs again, Vecchio and Fraser were eating at the table without looking at either Gerard or Richard, and Richard was sitting with his head bent over his folded arms, not looking at anyone.

“Adam, what are you doing this morning?”

“Checking Commerce reports,” Pierson said. “Setting up contacts for Willow to process. Taking breakfast over to Dana.”

“Ray can do that,” Gerard said. “Keep Richard with you and keep him awake. Okay?”

“Okay,” Pierson said, sounding mildly surprised. He glanced at Richard.

“Let’s go, George,” Gerard said, and pointed. Through in the lounge, Gerard closed the door and walked over to his desk. He didn’t sit down. “We’ve got a leak.”

“What?” Cowley stared. There was a cold buzz up his back. “What kind of leak? Where?”

“A leak about Richard,” Gerard said.

Cowley sat down. He bit down on Is that all? Richard could be sold to Commerce interrogators as of today, and the only thing he’d be able to tell them – if they bothered to ask – was the sheer volume of coffee drunk by Deputy US Marshals. But any leak of information, however unimportant in itself, was potentially serious.

“What’s happened?”

“I got an offer to buy Richard yesterday. From a former colleague of his, a Doctor Nicholls. It would be a legal sale – Nicholls runs a Final destination lab in Chicago Memorial Hospital, they tried to buy Richard back when he was first sentenced – but I think it was instigated by someone here as a rescue mission. Either that, or someone from outside has penetrated our security in ways I am very unhappy with.”

“Or someone saw you leave the arena last Saturday with Richard.”

“If that’s what happened, we won’t find it out without interviewing Doctor Nicholls. That’s a last resort. Even if that’s what happened, we’ve got to eliminate everyone here as a source.”

“Including me?”

“If you wanted rid of Richard that badly, he’d be dead by now,” Gerard said. “Everyone else would want him out alive.”

Cowley folded his hands together, and looked up at Gerard. “Whatever your reason for buying him, it’s not worth losing any one of your team.”

Gerard sighed. He rubbed the back of his hand over his face. “If I can avoid it, I don’t intend to lose anyone over this. I thought it might be Ray and Benton, but I talked to them last night. Hoped it might be. If it was them, they were just being damn-fool abolitionists wanting to get Richard out of my evil clutches.”

“You don’t trust us with your reasons for buying him,” Cowley said.

“You, yeah,” Gerard said. “I want a slave to live here and sleep with me who wears a convict collar.”

“Why?” Cowley stared up at him.

“Oh, you know why, if you think about it,” Gerard said. He sat down and leaned forward. “But I don’t want the others to think about it. Not even Adam, and he’s got the best poker face, after you and me. What’s the first thing Commerce are going to do if – ” Gerard shrugged and grimaced. “If and when. You know.”

They had no word for the event they were working towards. You have words for what you discuss, and by policy they did not directly discuss it. “The hoped-for change”, the ministers had called it with whom Cowley had discussed the assignment before he left.

“The first thing?” Cowley frowned. Call out the army, send for the air force, summon the US marshals, have Congress declare martial law, have the President declare martial law and send troops to occupy Congress – there were so many ‘first reactions’ possible. The British government had reasonably certain estimates that there were ninety-seven million slaves within the USNA borders, and the one thing everyone felt certain of was that no one would take on the unacceptable task of killing them all – they were protected, quite simply, by the sheer scale of such a goal. Some would be killed. Many if not all of those who lived outside the walls of corporations would be killed by their panicked owners, if a network could not protect them. But not even Commerce could sanction killing every slave, or even planning to do so…

Not every slave.

“They’ll kill the convicts,” Cowley said. “Activate their collars.”

Gerard nodded. His face was very bleak. He smiled, joylessly. “Richard is my canary. If and when – I’ll know.”

Cowley stared at him. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and it was more prayer than curse. “That was why you bought him?” It made sense – if you could stomach the brutal practicality of it, it made perfect sense. They had always known their greatest risk came from their inability to place anyone inside Commerce – that they would not know that Commerce was reacting until it might be too late.

“Yeah,” Gerard said. He paused,watching Cowley.

Cowley stared back, literally speechless. It was brutal and practical, direct and effective: it was pure Gerard, but Cowley hadn’t seen it, because –

I couldn’t do it.

If it turned out to be necessary to accomplish their goal, Cowley could kill any one of Gerard’s team – even the girl, Willow, if she turned out to be the source of the leak. In past years he had handed over whole familes to Gerard to be rendered to Commerce, families whose only crime was to have taken in a hungry, hunted slave and given food and shelter and sent them on their way, who weren’t worth saving in their brutal numbers game because they’d done so out of pure kindness, not because they were linked to any larger network –

But he could not have taken Richard to his bed knowing what would happen to the man when – if –

I couldn’t do it.

“Dana asked me, couple of nights ago, if I minded that the only slaves we ever get to rescue are the ones who don’t deserve it – the killers who get sent to us, the ones we’re supposed to kill. Minded. Jesus. What am I gonna deserve, when this is all over, to eat my own gun? You can take that look off your face, okay? Just forget I told you. I’m keeping Richard for my own good reasons, which you can continue to assume are just because I want to screw that big dangerous hunk – and I want to find out who leaked that I got him.”

Cowley imposed calm on his face, and when he knew his voice would be steady, he said “I’ll pull the phone records.”

“Everyone’s. Check every laptop, too. Mine and yours. Someone might have borrowed one.”

“Of course.”

“The report’s a priority,” Gerard added. “I don’t think whoever leaked about Richard is much of a threat, but I want to find out who.”

“Certainly.”

They sat there staring at each other. The morning light was naked on Gerard’s face.

tbc

The Players: Benton

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:59:25 GMT

This is part five of the second section (seven parts) of the story (part one, part two, part three, part four) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: Benton

There were axioms that Benton had never thought to challenge till he had got married and moved to Chicago.

My father would not lie to me.

Ray’s father had tried to sell both Ray and Ray’s sister when they were minor children. Benton’s father had bought and sold slaves. These were the kinds of things he thought about now when he couldn’t sleep, and for four hours, he hadn’t been able to sleep.

My father would not lie to me.

Parents defend and protect their children.

“Ray,” he said quietly, his mouth against his husband’s ear.

“Can’t be,” Ray said, out loud, through a yawn. “That was ten minutes ago.”

“Four hours, Ray.”

“Can’t be,” Ray said, pushing himself up and looking at Benton with a kind of dogged despair. “Can’t be, can’t be, can’t be…” He stood up, shook his head, yawned widely, and staggered to the washroom. He was certainly awake.

Benton lay down where Ray had slept, and turned his face into the blanket that smelt of Ray, and went to sleep.

When he woke again, there was a mug of hot coffee and a doughnut on the shelf beside the couch: Sam Gerard was sitting on the chair, coffee in one hand, doughnut in the other.

“You awake?”

Benton sat up. “I believe so.”

“I sent Ray and Dana back to their rooms to get some real sleep. Drink your coffee.”

“What day is it?”

Gerard glanced at his watch. “Thursday morning.”

“Are they dead?”

“No,” Gerard said, shaking his head, half-smiling. “Dana says they’re going to live. You stand watch now till the morning, I’ll send Dana back again then.” He glanced up, over Benton’s shoulder, at the readouts on the screens. “If you’re not going to eat that damn doughnut, go fix yourself something else, okay?”

Adam and Willow were still in the kitchen, as they had been there every break Benton had taken for the past two days – both of them heads together over the same laptop, arguing in low voices and making changes to the screen.

“Don’t you think you should let Willow get some sleep?” Benton asked. He had fixed and was eating a bowl of cereal with dried fruit and toasted nuts: Ray, if he’d been awake to comment, would have protested.

“Hey, she’s keeping me awake.”

“Am not,” Willow said, head down. “Are they – ?”

“Where’s Richard?” Benton asked.

“Oh, Sam locked him in the holding cell about an hour ago,” Adam said. “He went quietly.”

“They’re all still alive,” Benton said. He was unable to suppress a smile: Willow smiled back.

“I should get back,” Benton said.

“We probably should stop for the night,” Adam admitted. “I’m not as young as I used to be.” He laughed.

Benton stood in the hall outside the kitchen. He was strangely familiar with this place: more familiar than he would have liked. Since Sam Gerard had recruited them both, six years ago, he and Ray had slept here, eaten here, worked here – even, sometimes, made love in the bedrooms upstairs. Ray admired Gerard wholeheartedly with an enthusiasm that Benton couldn’t share.

Upstairs, in the holding cell, Gerard had a prisoner of his own. Ray said that a man who could murder his wife, brutally and cruelly, was a scumbag who deserved to be condemned to slavery – who deserved worse than the way Gerard treated him.

My father would not lie to me.

Parents defend and protect their children.

Good, hardworking people do not become slaves.

Foundational axioms. Benton wished, sometimes, he was still the person who had never thought to challenge them. Never known any reason to challenge them.

He did not like Gerard. That did not matter: he respected Gerard, trusted him in any matter connected with their work – trusted him more absolutely than that, with Ray’s life. Benton did not like being included in bambini by Gerard, did not like being identified as one of “Sam Gerard’s kids”: but he had recognised some time ago that he felt completely comforted to know that Ray was one of “Gerard’s kids”. Gerard would protect Ray, if that became necessary.

For six years,they had known they were living on borrowed time.

My father would not lie to me.

Parents defend and protect their children.

Good, hardworking people do not become slaves.

I will never participate in a conspiracy to overthrow the USNA government.

“You good for the night?” Gerard picked himself up. “God, I’m tired.” He gave Benton one of his oddly sweet smiles, and took himself off. To the other side of the house, where he had a prisoner, locked in a cell, available for rape.

Benton sat down on the chair Gerard had just left, still warm from his body. It was one o’clock in the morning. Three prisoners on this side of the house would survive because of Sam Gerard. You couldn’t balance that with the fate of the prisoner on the other side of the house. But at least this was something, some kind of compensation for what he and Ray had done on Monday: something they were doing right.

Dana came over just after eight, and Ray followed half an hour later, with two cups of coffee and bagels that Giles had brought in. The prisoners were probably conscious, silent, but their eyes opened, closed, seemed to react. Dana had them on a complicated drugs cocktail being fed to them intravenously: but they still reacted. “You might as well sleep here,” Dana said. “The cleaning crew are in the house.”

“I didn’t bring you any coffee,” Ray told Benton, helpfully.

“Thank you,” Benton said. He thought about it. “Won’t they be coming over here next?”

“Yes,” Dana said, “but we won’t be letting them in here.”

Dana had done what she could with the mouths of the three prisoners, but they would still have difficulty talking. They were, in Adam’s parlance, haeftlings: like Richard, they probably would never talk much except when alone with other slaves. Gerard had laid down ground rules long ago on the things no one should talk about in front of slaves or prisoners. Their temporary fear and confusion was supposed to be a acceptable price for them to pay.

By early afternoon, Benton woke again and Dana sent him over to the other side of the house to get sandwiches. The kitchen was empty: the fridge was full again.

Benton was sitting at the table constructing three sandwiches out of cold cuts, lettuce, and tomatoes, when Richard came in: he was holding five empty mugs and two plates. He froze in the doorway, seeing Benton.

“Good afternoon, Richard,” Benton said. Richard did not move or speak. “Please do come in.”

Richard stacked the mugs and plates in the washer. He emptied out the coffee pot and refilled the coffee maker. He moved quietly, but not inaudibly. Willow had said it gave her the creeps, but Benton thought that must be the effect both of her knowledge of Richard’s crime and that Richard rarely spoke.

“Are you expected back in the lounge?” Benton asked. “Would you like to sit down?”

After a moment, Richard shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” Benton said. He went on putting the sandwiches together, not sure what he could do when he was finished. “Please understand, I can’t do anything to change the conditions of your imprisonment here. But I am sorry.”

Richard’s mouth twitched suddenly in what was almost a smile. Benton smiled back.

“Have you eaten yet today? Would you care for a sandwich?”

Richard shook his head again.

“No, you haven’t eaten? No, you don’t like the look of these sandwiches?” Benton asked.

This time the twitch was really half a smile. “I had food,” Richard said. He sounded a little distanced from his own words, as if each one was being considered. “Earlier. I’m okay.” He stopped. “Thank you,” he added.

“We’re all extremely busy,” Benton said. “Especially just now, for reasons I can’t discuss with you. But we don’t bear you any active ill-will.” He thought about it briefly. “Well, most of us don’t, and Ray’s hostility towards you is exaggerated, he wouldn’t actually harm you in any way. Gerard’s orders were to let you alone. You have no cause to be concerned about how any of the rest of us may treat you.”

After a moment, Richard nodded. The coffee was brewing. He lined up three clean mugs.

“Who’s awake?”

“Sam is in the lounge,” Richard said. “So are Giles and George.”

“Thank you,” Benton said. He had finished making the sandwiches. There was really nothing more to be said.

They settled it that Dana would stay over in the clinic on Thursday night, and he and Ray would sleep in one of the guest rooms: relieve her Friday morning for the last day. The prisoners were all doing well. Adam delivered a paper copy of the report he and Willow had put together, grumbling that Dana had left her iPhone behind, and Benton and Ray went back to the other side of the house together.

Gerard was sitting at his desk looking at his own laptop: George at the chair nearby, reading a paper copy. He was frowning.

Giles and Willow were on the couch at the far end of the room: Giles was looking at the report on Willow’s laptop, and Willow was staring off into space.

Gerard looked up. “Everything okay?”

Richard was nowhere to be seen. “They’re all still alive,” Ray said.

“Good.” Gerard glanced, frowning, around the room. “Hell, where’s Richard?” A beep signalled arriving e-mail: Gerard looked down at the screen, muttered “What’s this?” in tones of pure exasperation, and looked up at Benton. “Go find Richard, okay?”

“Yes, Sam.”

Richard wasn’t in the kitchen: or in the ground floor bathroom: or in the function room in back of the kitchen: the back door out to the garden was locked: the front door and both doors to the working part of the house were locked. Upstairs, all three bedrooms and the bathrooms were empty. Benton opened the holding cell door: Richard was sitting on the mattress, head back against the wall.

“Gerard wants you,” Benton said.

Richard got to his feet. He nodded. Benton waited. After a moment Richard said “May I use the bathroom?” He looked at the commode.

Benton let him use the bathroom attached to the guest room he and Ray used. Downstairs, Gerard was no longer looking at his laptop. He had swung round in his chair and stared at Richard with a narrow frown. “Where had you got to?”

“I was in my room,” Richard said.

“Hell, didn’t I give you orders to tell someone before you put yourself in there?”

“Yes, Sam,” Richard said. His hands were flat-palmed against his thighs: his voice was not shaking, but his hands were moving, nervous twitches. “I’m sorry. Everyone seemed to be very busy.”

“Yeah. Don’t care how busy. Tell someone. Got it?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Willow, what are you doing?”

Willow started and sat up. “I – I guess I’m – ” She looked around the room. “I’m not really doing anything.”

“Then you and Richard get through to the kitchen and get some supper on, okay?”

George was still reading the report, but he looked up. “None for me. Sam, I want to take this home and think about it. Don’t send it anywhere yet, will you?”

“Is it all right?” Willow sounded startled and worried.

“It’s a grand piece of work,” George said. “I’m very impressed.”

“I can’t send it anyway till Dana’s amended it with the final details,” Sam said. “You let me know when you’re done thinking, George.”

Giles went through to the kitchen with Willow and Richard: Gerard pointed to chairs for Benton and Ray. “I want you to know I really appreciate your work this week,” he said. “You’ve earned a rest. You should get the weekend off.” He grinned. “Of course I say that now, I might have to say something different Sunday morning.”

“Everyone’s been working very hard,” Benton said.

“Yeah,” Gerard said. “I got a very interesting e-mail concerning Richard just now.”

“What about him?” Ray asked.

“Someone wants to buy him, that’s all.” Gerard sat back in his chair. “I got an offer from a Doctor Charles Nicholls, on behalf of a medical experimentation facility he runs. He’s offering quite a bit of money which he says is coming out of his research budget. Doctor Nicholls works for Chicago Memorial Hospital, which is, as I recall, where Doctor Richard Kimble used to work. I somehow do not think that Doctor Kimble’s old colleague really wants to buy him in order to do him in by medical tests: I think this is a rescue attempt.” Gerard tilted his chair back and folded his hands across his stomach. He was smiling. “I’d say that of all my kids, you two like the idea of my owning Richard least, would you say that was a fair estimation?”

“I don’t care what you do with that scumbag!”

Benton took a breath. “I think that it’s fair to say we are both personally opposed to the ownership, buying, and selling of human beings. Very strongly so.”

Ray glanced at him. “Or …what he said. Yeah.”

“I picked up Richard from the arena on Saturday, right after their right to hold his contract lapsed. I suppose other people could have been waiting for the right time to make a bid on Richard to buy him from the arena, but the timing of this is all wrong. It’s not a bid to Commerce that they’ve forwarded to me. Doctor Nicholls knows I am holding Richard. How do you suppose he could have found out?”

The question hung in the air. Gerard wasn’t smiling any more. Benton’s mind went scrambling back over the past days: for most of them Ray had been either in sight or in earshot or in a deeply exhausted sleep.

Ray had taken the same few seconds to react. “You think we told him? How would we have known? I didn’t know the scumbag had any friends!”

“Sam,” Benton said. “Quite apart from what Ray said – I had no idea who I would ask to buy Richard in order to rescue him from here without landing him somewhere worse – if you really think that we did that, why are we still working for you?”

Gerard shrugged. He still wasn’t smiling. “I think either one of you is capable of it,” he said. “And both of you knew it. You both took a minute to think, figured out that the other one of you hadn’t had time to do it this week, and then you relaxed and got mad at me for being a suspicious son of a bitch.” He sat up. “Okay. Neither of you did it. But there’s got to be a leak somewhere. I don’t like it, but I don’t see how Nicholls found out I’ve got Richard just by coincidence.”

“Maybe someone did some research,” Ray said. He still looked shaken, but his voice looked steady. “Will found out all about Kimble in a few hours Sunday morning.”

“Records concerning Final transactions are sealed,” Gerard said. “Maybe Willow could crack them and Commerce not find out. If someone else as good as our girl is working in this state and we don’t know it, we’re in bad trouble already. Otherwise, the only people who’d have a right to know if they made a formal application to Commerce are Lady Helen Waverley’s immediate family: no children, parents both dead, brother’s a well-known drunk in New York. Don’t talk about this, okay? Not till I say.”

“What are you going to do about this?” Benton asked.

“I’m going to tell Doctor Nicholls no,” Gerard said.

tbc

Comment if reading here at JF, so I know to update links which at the moment are all IJ cause it's easier.

The Players: Adam

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:08:20 GMT

This is part four of the second section (seven parts) of the story (part one, part two, part three) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: Adam

This time when Adam opened his eyes, there was daylight in the room: wet cold grey daylight. Dana was asleep next to him: she still looked exhausted.

Silently, Adam got up, showered, dressed without waking her, and went out of the room. Gerard’s door was firmly closed: he was probably asleep too.

Or fucking Richard.

Adam stopped by the holding cell door and unlocked it. Richard was sitting on the mattress, knees up against his chest, head back against the wall. He was wearing a set of Gerard’s sweats, as he had yesterday. He was staring at Adam, or at the open door.

After a moment, Richard moved, as if he was remembering what he was supposed to do: he shifted from a seated position to a kneeling one. He opened his mouth, swallowed twice, and said very carefully, “Do you think I could have some water?”

“You can have a shower and breakfast if you want,” Adam said. He smiled briefly, amused. “Or even if you don’t want. Come on.”

No one was in the other bedroom, though the overnight bags dumped on the bed were probably Benton’s and Ray’s. Adam gave Richard a toothglass full of water, and turned him into the shower.

Richard was handsome, skinny, and not scarred. Benton and Willow were the only two who’d seen him bare-ass, and neither of them had mentioned it: but for anyone who’d seen arena slaves before, for a man who had supposedly just spent three years fighting for his life, he didn’t have nearly enough scars. No matter how good he was, and no one was that good. The convict collar was real, though.

Richard came out of the shower. He had a day or so growth of stubble on his face. He rubbed at it, glanced at Adam, and looked away again.

“You want a razor?”

“Sam let me use one,” Richard said. He sounded uncertain, as if he were expecting Adam to wake Gerard to find out.

There were disposable safeties in the guest bathrooms. Adam handed Richard one, and watched him get rid of the stubble.

“I thought you looked good in a beard.”

Richard’s hand stilled. He swallowed, hard, and his hand still did not move. He had been staring in the mirror with the agonised male squint of achieving a close shave, and Adam, watching, saw his eyes close.

After a moment, Richard’s hands went down to the sink’s edge, and clutched at it. His head bowed. After another moment, his legs shifted, a fraction wider apart. Then he did not move.

To apologise would probably have the effect of confusing Richard further: besides, if he were honest – though he had no plans to be – Adam had expected some kind of reaction to a comment on Richard’s looks, whether flirtatious, shy, defensive, frightened, resentful – any would be normal slave reactions: anger under all, to be expected. But not this silent, frozen acquiscience. This was the reaction of a haeftling.

The useful thing to do would be to walk away: but Adam did not care to think of Gerard’s reaction if he had left Richard alone in a bathroom full of potential suicide hazards and lost him. Adam dropped the lid of the toilet stool, sat down on it, reached for a set of nail clippers Willow had left behind last time she slept here, and began to trim his fingernails with finicky precision. “If you’re going to shave, get on with it,” he said, mildly enough. “I want my breakfast, if you don’t.”

Willow was in the kitchen: she looked as tired as Dana. “Giles and George are in the lounge, they’re doing Commerce reports and contact checking,” she said, when Adam came in with Richard, without any other greeting.

“Hello,” Adam said, amused. Willow often seemed on edge around virtually everyone except Dana and Gerard himself: and Giles, of course. “Sam said it was you and me today. Did he explain?”

“Sort of,” Willow said. She glanced at Richard.

“Yeah, it can wait till after I’ve had breakfast. And Richard. Where did Giles take you out for dinner last night?”

George and Giles both had taken her out: to a restaurant that specialised in “English” food. “They kept saying it wasn’t authentic,” Willow said. “But I thought it was lovely – real British décor, and they had British songs playing all evening, classics like the Beatles and Elton John. They said the shepherd’s pie had beef in it. What should it have?”

“Shepherds,” Adam said, and laughed. “Mutton.” He knew the restaurant – it survived by being exclusive and expensive, senior Commerce staff were said to eat there – and wondered if Willow had noticed what had undoubtedly been assumed, of a young woman dining with two men old enough to be her father and grandfather. Willow’s relationship with Giles was strange enough, though Dana would get sarcastic if Adam said so.

It was odd to have a slave in the kitchen and do the work yourself, but Adam had noticed that all the working knives had been put away out of sight, into locations that required at least a moment’s thought before they could be used. Gerard evidently didn’t intend Richard to become familiar with where to find them. Adam made scrambled eggs and toast for himself and Richard, poured them each a mug of coffee, and let Willow tell him all about the Beatles. Here and now he passed as not much older than her, and Willow did know a fair amount of trivia.

“Okay working here?” Adam asked, and Willow shrugged, pulling her laptop out of her bag. His own was upstairs: it would be easier to let Willow use hers.

“Richard, why don’t you go find out if they need anything in the lounge?” Adam said. “If they don’t, don’t rush back.”

Richard nodded, got to his feet, and left the room. Willow glanced after him.

“He gives me the creeps,” she said.

“In what way?” Adam was briefly interested.

“In a creepy way,” Willow said, as if that explained everything. “He never talks and he’s always so quiet. Do you think…” She looked at Adam. “Is Sam, you know… is he Sam’s bodyslave?”

“Who knows?” Adam shrugged. “Can you seriously imagine Sam with one of those gilded pets swanning around after him, naked except for maybe a couple of decorative gold chains?”

Willow looked as if she were imagining it, and abruptly, quite unexpectedly, she giggled. Adam got the image in his mind’s eye – Sam Gerard, as he’d looked last night, dressed and armed and armoured, with a slim shaven blond pouring decoratively over him – the expression on Gerard’s face was pure grim distaste. He snorted a laugh himself.

“We’ve got these five people,” he told Willow, “and Sam wants us to give Commerce a lot of information about them.”

“I’ve never done an interrogation,” Willow said. She had stopped giggling. “I know that’s how I’m listed, but that’s just – ”

“Steady on. We’re not doing an interrogation. We can’t, anyway, two of them are dead and the rest won’t be able to talk. It’s safe to give away as much as we can tell, these five were just a random breakout. No connections – they were born company slaves.”

“I’d like to talk to Sam,” Willow said.

“When he wakes up,” Adam said. “I’ve got the case files.” He produced the memory stick. “We’ve got till Friday – Sam said Commerce would expect them all to be dead by then.”

All morning, it rained. The dull grey windows in the kitchen lashed with water. Richard appeared three times to make and deliver coffee: as Willow had noticed, he didn’t say anything. Haeftling was a name for his condition, not an explanation.

About eleven, Gerard appeared, barefoot, wearing faded jeans and grey t-shirt. “Adam, why the hell didn’t you wake me?”

“Couldn’t find your Glock to stick in your ear,” Adam retorted, coming up from a sea of data. He caught Willow looking away and down with a small smile, and lifted his eyebrows. “Also, you have an alarm clock.”

“Forgot to re-set it,” Gerard said. “Where’s Richard?”

“In the lounge.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Then he’s probably taking a leak.”

Richard appeared in the doorway behind Gerard, and an instant later Gerard turned his head. He reached out and caught at Richard’s wrist, moving back and turning sideways, till they were facing each other.

They had about worked through a first pass on Casey, and got an idea of what shape the report ought to be. Adam lifted his head to watch.

“Who let you out?”

Richard probably tried to gesture something, but Gerard said “It’s fine. Who?”

“Adam did,” Richard said.

“Had breakfast?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Good, good.” Gerard let go of Richard’s wrist. “Get me some coffee, OK?” He disappeared, probably heading upstairs.

Willow looked up. “Richard.”

Richard stopped in his tracks. He looked at Adam, almost as if for rescue, and back at Willow. He said nothing.

“How come you’ll talk to Sam, and not to us?”

Richard shook his head. He poured coffee into a mug. In the doorway, he turned, holding the mug carefully, and looked at Willow.

“He owns me,” he said, and left.

Willow stared after him. She looked startled and a little annoyed. “What did he mean?”

“Sam forces him to respond,” Adam said. “Hadn’t you noticed? Richard’s a haeftling.”

“What? German for… labourer?”

“Literally. German for factory worker – company slave. A piece, an item, a tool. A slave who acts like a tool.”

“But he was a doctor,” Willow said.

“Was,” Adam interrupted. “He’s nothing. Dana thinks he’s still a doctor, but she’s wrong – he’s just… nothing.”

“Nobody’s nothing. He’d be insane if he just thought he was nothing.”

“Yes.”

Willow stared at the doorway, where Richard wasn’t, and gave Adam a long curious look. She went back to work.

Dana didn’t come downstairs. Adam found when he went looking for her, when he and Willow had decided to take a break between Elliot and the first John, that she had gone directly to the clinic.

Ray was asleep on the examination couch: he’d been watching over the three survivors since he and Benton arrived, Dana said. Benton was still awake, but beginning to flag.

“You go to sleep,” Dana said. “I’ll need you later.”

“I can’t stay long,” Adam said.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Benton said.

“Go to sleep,” Dana said again. Benton glanced at Ray, and went out into the hall: there was an old sofa shoved against the wall for moments like these.

“Did you have anything to eat?” Adam asked.

“Sam brought me over a sandwich.”

“Good, good,” Adam said, imitating Gerard. “Did you actually eat it?”

“Yes,” Dana said, in a tone of voice indicating she didn’t intend to find him funny.

The three survivors were still unconscious, but their breathing was easier than last night. Their naked bodies were disfigured and bruised, but had been cleaned and raw patches taped over. “How are they doing?”

“They’ll live, I think,” Dana said, but not as if she was sure of it, and added more quickly. “How’s Willow?”

“She’s fine,” Adam said, surprised. “She looked like she’d been crying half the night this morning, but she’s doing fine now. We’ve got an outline for four out of five.”

“Did you find out about the … John and the other John?”

“What about them? They just give them these names because they’re easier than ‘hey you’.” Adam waited a moment: Dana was still staring at him. “It was coincidence. They were in different work gangs.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Are you staying here tonight?”

“I have to. You don’t…”

“Oh, I’ll stay.” Adam moved closer. Dana looked up at him. She looked focussed, intent, and busy.

Adam put his hands on her shoulders. “Hug?”

He had always, all his life, been a complete pushover for fragile-looking tough women who could look up at him with enormous eyes. Dana put her arms round him, hugged him: stepped back from him. “Thank you.” Her attention was already returning to the prisoners who lay half-living and not quite dying.

He had always, all his life, been a complete sucker for focussed idealists. “My pleasure,” he said, but Dana wasn’t listening.

On the way back to the kitchen, Gerard intercepted him. “Have you got five minutes?”

There was a carton sitting in the delivery shelter: it needed to be picked up and brought in. Normally deliveries arrived Thursday with the cleaning crew just to avoid this problem. Adam shrugged his coat back on and followed Gerard down to the gate.

It was bulky, not heavy. “What is it?”

“Clothes for Richard,” Gerard said, quite seriously.

Adam looked up, amused, and then looked up again: “You’re dressing him?”

“It’s that or he borrows all my spare sweats.”

They scanned the package, checked the delivery note, and picked the carton up between them.

“Sam?”

“What?”

“Richard didn’t spend three years in the arena,” Adam said. “He doesn’t have enough scars. Any scars, really.”

“And you know this how?” Gerard wasn’t looking at him, and he wasn’t shouting. His voice was all but accentless.

“Benton saw him bare-ass in the shower. So did Willow, more or less. They both say he doesn’t have any real scars. Also, he doesn’t…” Adam hesitated, waved his free hand. “…he doesn’t look like that kind of fighter.”

“No.” Gerard’s accent had slid back. His voice sounded more human. “He spent three years in a room just outside the arena’s big doors. The survivors of each game get triaged. When the arena bought him, they put him in the body-sorting gang. When they’d done sorting survivors, he’d work in the clinic fixing the ones who could be fixed, the rest of the time. Eight hours on, eight hours off, for three years. That’s why he has no scars. He never fought in the arena.”

They were at the house. If he didn’t say something now, he wouldn’t. “He’s a haeftling,” Adam said.

Gerard gave him a look. They shouldered into the house, and Gerard yelled “Richard!”

Richard ran downstairs. Gerard pointed at the carton. “Got your clothes. Go put them away in your room, I’ll come by and let you out again in half an hour. Go. Adam.” Gerard pointed at the main door. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Just around the house,” Gerard said. “Let’s talk.”

Gerard knew what a haeftling was. They’d talked about it when he’d recruited Adam.

“First of all I want to tell you something, and I don’t want you to punch me,” Adam said.

“Okay.” Adam shot him a cautious look, not trusting the equable tone. Gerard looked back at him expressionlessly. “Be a waste of time, in your case, wouldn’t it?”

“I let Richard take a shower and have a shave this morning.”

“I noticed somebody had.”

“I told him he looked good,” Adam said. “And he just… presented.”

“What?”

“He made himself available for me to screw,” Adam said, coldly, but stepped back from Gerard’s stare.

“I said, no fucking with his head! Didn’t you hear me?”

“He didn’t react like a human being. He reacted like someone who thinks he’s a thing. Like he thought he was nothing. But a human being is not nothing. What else are we doing this for? The haeftlings will not be nothing forever. Push them, compress them, pack them like they’re nothing – and watch them explode. Isn’t that what we’re doing here?”

Gerard gave him a long, sober look.

“You’re taking an explosion into your house – if not your bed,” Adam said. “What makes you think you have the right to do that?”

Gerard’s swift grin, unamused, made him look like a gargoyle. “Everyone seems to think they know better than me,” he said. “Leave Richard the fuck alone.”

Dana didn’t come to bed that night. Adam went to bed early, and lay awake, reading a book from Sam’s collection of trashed novels. He was listening for Sam and Richard coming up the stairs. He was curious to know if he’d hear what Richard said, if he said the same thing again that made Gerard accuse him of lying.

He didn’t hear it: only the holding cell door closing, and Gerard going on to his bedroom alone.

tbc

As noted: if anyone's reading this here, let me know to give me motivation to fix the links, which otherwise all go to IJ.

The Players: Dana

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 08:43:20 GMT

This is part three of the second section (seven parts) of the story (part one, part two) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: Dana

Dana liked Willow: the girl tried hard. Giles had arrived with a reputation as some kind of hotshot trainer, but although Giles certainly knew a lot of tricks at close-quarters combat, he couldn’t teach them except to another expert: he’d get exasperated and lose his temper if his student didn’t pick up everything, first time, only time.

Gerard was standing by the door watching them both: Willow saw him just after Dana did, and her final pattern was the best one of the day. He came over to the range and looked at their targets. “You’re getting good at that, young lady.”

“I’m not a young lady,” Willow said.

“I was talking to Dana,” Gerard said, without a beat. “Willow, your numbers are good: the governor congratulated me today on the performance of our team.” He sounded out every syllable. “Not that what he thinks means a damn thing, but if he’s saying it in public, it’s because his political advisors told him what he thinks, and you know where they get their numbers. Fine work.”

“I got them arrested,” Willow said. “Those families…”

Gerard shook his head abruptly. “No, you did not. You give me the numbers, I give the orders, I make the decisions, you are not responsible. Pack up your gun and go home. Don’t forget to clean it. I already told Giles and George to go. Dana.”

“Yes, Sam?”

“Not you.” Gerard waited until Willow was out of the door. “We’ve got a delivery tonight, about three am, warm bodies.”

“How many?”

“Five.” They had not had five at once before. “We’re their final destination. I want you and Adam to stay over.”

Dana nodded, once. Gerard was eyeing her.

“Check the supplies in the clinic. I don’t know their condition, but we’re supposed to get some kind of closing information out of them. I’ll give Adam the case files. Any of them we can package up to go, there’s a foreign delivery Friday night. Got it?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“How much is Willow hurting over this?”

“It’s the first time we’ve run a big case using her numbers only,” Dana said slowly. “Even if you tell her it’s not her responsibility, she’s going to feel it.”

“Whose idea was it to do target practice this afternoon?”

“Giles,” Dana said, after a moment, disentangling the conversation: it had been an almost casual aside from Giles. “He seemed to think it might help.”

Gerard rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “Did it?” He waited for an answer, but Dana didn’t have one: after a moment he turned away and left Dana to clean her own gun and put it back.

Everyone was leaving – well, Ray and Benton had evidently already gone: Gerard was packing Giles and George out of the door with Willow. “Take her out to dinner. Don’t let her get drunk, she’s armed and dangerous.”

Adam was leaning up against the door to the lounge with his hands tucked deep in his pockets. He had looked like a graduate student in his twenties when she first met him, and he still did: deceptively harmless.

Gerard closed and locked the door, and turned: his eyes went first to Richard, Dana saw, who was standing in the middle of the hall, his hands palming his legs, looking – now she was noticing him – far more tense and unhappy than he had appeared to be earlier in the day, when Adam and the others had begun using him to run for coffee or soup. He was a doctor, she remembered: a vascular surgeon. Respected and wealthy amd well-connected. Until he brutally murdered his wife.

“Well, kids, let’s get dinner,” Gerard said. “Richard, pick up whatever dishes they left in the lounge and bring it through to the kitchen. Mugs, plates, anything. Don’t touch anything else.”

“I can do that,” Adam said mildly.

“No, let Richard do it,” Gerard said, and moved, brushing directly past Richard on his way down the hall.

Dana had briefly wondered how Gerard meant to manage dinner for the four of them – Melissa would have told her she’d read too many wealth-fantasy novels, but Dana had seen how the kind of person who owned slaves expected to be able to treat them, and making them kneel in the corner to eat was the least of it.

But Gerard told Richard, when he returned to the kitchen with both his hands full, to stack the dishes in the washer, and sit down. When he told Adam to put the bowls and plates out, it was clear he meant Richard to be included. Dinner was beef and vegetable stew, and Gerard was – as he always was, at times like these – perfectly charming: as if he was just a courteous host, as if nothing else was happening.

“Drink?” he said finally.

“No, thanks,” Dana said. “Not if I’m working.” She glanced at Richard, and saw for a an instant his eyes, wide and dark, meet hers: his look flinched away, and he sat with bent head. He hadn’t, Dana realised, said one word all evening – not so much as a yes or a no.

“I’ll take one,” Adam cut in. “All you need me for is the heavy lifting.”

“I still have to wake you up.” Dana didn’t feel amused.

Gerard took down the bottle of 10-year-old bourbon, put three glasses on the table, and poured a small shot in each: he handed one to Adam, pushed one across the table to Richard, and picked the third up himself. “Dana, if you can’t wake Adam, come get me and I’ll see if he can sleep through a Glock in his ear.” His voice changed, jovially false, as if he were talking to a politician. “Drink it, Richard.”

Richard picked up his glass and sipped at it. Gerard nodded and sat down again: he sounded normal again, cheerful and friendly. Dana had never heard him use that voice at this table.

Not ten minutes later, Richard’s head jerked back and up suddenly, as if he were about to fall asleep as he sat. Gerard stood up, interrupting conversation, as if this was something he’d been waiting for. “Good night. We’re going up to bed now.”

Adam lifted his eyebrows at Dana: Gerard had took hold of Richard’s arm and was quite literally walking him out of the room. When they heard the two sets of feet climb the stairs, Adam stood up, noiseless, and moved towards the door. Dana shrugged and followed: she was curious, too.

Upstairs, they heard Richard say something, too quietly for the words to be understood, but they both heard Gerard’s reply, stark and crisp “You’re lying to me, Richard. Don’t do that.”

The holding cell door shut and locked. Gerard, when he went on to his room, did so alone.

“So he isn’t screwing Richard,” Adam said, back in the kitchen. He spoke very quietly. “George said he probably wasn’t.”

“Well, not tonight,” Dana said. “Why?”

Adam gave her a faintly exasperated look. “Because he made such a big deal over it being none of our business if he was.”

“But Sam’d say that anyway.”

“George was right, though.”

“He always is,” Dana pointed out. Before Gerard hired Willow – Giles had proved an unexpectedly useful bonus – George had been the analyst who called the numbers. Willow did it with a set of software algorithms she fed all the available names into: George just used to read the information, think about it for twenty-four hours, and come back with a list.

Adam shrugged, evidently not thinking it worth while to argue the obvious. George might have said the problems were getting too complicated for him, but he never had made a mistake.

It hadn’t been midnight yet when she and Adam had gone to sleep: Dana woke to Sam Gerard prodding her quilt-covered shoulder, not gently. “It’s almost three, Doctor,” he said when her eyes opened. “This is your wake up call.”

“Okay,” Dana said. She sat up, clutching at the quilt. “I’m awake.”

Gerard was fully dressed, and armed, both shoulder and ankle holsters. He went round the bed and prodded Adam, just as hard.

Adam stirred, blinked, and sat up, hand swinging out to grab Gerard’s arm and stopping halfway. “God. Okay. I’m awake.”

“Are they here yet?”

“No, they’re due. I got a call. Dana, I want you in the clinic. Adam, you’re with me. Get your ass in gear and get downstairs.”

Adam drew in a breath, and said, with dignity. “Get out of here, Sam.”

Gerard laughed. He turned to go. “Get your ass in pants, and get downstairs, bambini.”

“I thought you were going to set the alarm.” Adam was scrambling into his clothes.

“I did,” Dana said, just as it went off. “They’re early.”

Five bodies, strapped to gurneys. All of them were still breathing. Gerard and Adam brought them in, one by one. Three men, two women.

There was a set of things Commerce interrogators did to prisoners. By this time Dana could have written the handbook: she was fairly sure that Commerce had one. It wasn’t for information: if they wanted information, they sent the prisoners to someone like Dana or Giles before they battered at their mouths and hit them about the head, before they used some kind of blunt tool to violate them at mouth, vagina, and anus, before they were repeatedly beaten across the back and breasts and stomach –

They did these things to their prisoners when they didn’t care what information the prisoners provided, they wanted their other property to see the example.

They were not conscious: they’d been doped for transport. They were all still alive when Dana finished checking each of them. Their names were written on wrist tags. Two of them had the same name, coincidence or clerical error.

Gerard didn’t say anything. He looked at her, waiting.

Dana swallowed, and began to tell him. Elliot, John, Melinda, Casey, John. It niggled at her, in a stupid kind of way, that she didn’t know if they had been separately tagged John or some stupid person had been writing down names from a list and written this down twice.

Elliot, John, and Casey were probably going to live, if the beating hadn’t shut down their kidneys.

Melinda and the other John were going to die. The resources of a hospital might have saved them, but one doctor and a clinic that had officially been stocked for the emergency treatment of deputy marshals was not going to do anything useful for them.

Dana explained this to Gerard, trying to avoid too much technical detail, even knowing tonight Gerard was not going to cry “Bullshit!” and make her say it again, needing to make clear to Gerard’s grey bleak face that this was all they could do.

“Okay,” Gerard said. He nodded, slowly. “Okay. Those two, we OD, now. Give me the bullets.”

“I’ll do it,” Dana said.

“I give the orders,” Gerard said.

“They’re my patients.”

Adam had found the bullets – the narrow silver one-use lethal doses – and held them out to them. “One each.” He stepped back.

They stopped breathing.

“Do we have information on what the other three were given?”

Gerard shrugged. “Yeah, we know… it was something stupid.”

“Then I’ll stay here till it wears off, whatever it is,” Dana said. “When were they dosed?”

Gerard glanced at his watch. “Couldn’t have been less than three hours ago. Not likely it was more than nine.”

“Thanks.” Dana closed her eyes briefly. “I’ll stay here till whatever it is wears off, then I’ll try to figure out what kind of regimen we can put them on. I need to catheterise them.”

“Are we going to be able to question them at all?”

“I’ll let you know. I doubt it. They used …whatever it is they use, on their mouths.”

“Show me,” Gerard said.

Bending this low over each face: Dana could hear Gerard’s breathing, hear it check as he tried not to inhale. The prisoners’ breath was foul.

“You can see it was the same thing in each one. The lips and teeth are damaged in the same way.”

“Yeah.” Gerard straightened up. “Okay. They send us prisoners who can’t speak and ask us to juice them. Adam, tomorrow morning, it’s you and Willow on this: you got to find some way of us juicing these guys for all they got when Commerce knows they can’t talk. Everything we can give them won’t be too much, but you can figure Commerce knows they’ll all be dead by the end of the week. Dana, I’ll get Ray and Benton back, you can spell each other, but that’s all the help I can give you: can you do it?”

“If their kidneys haven’t been irrecoverably damaged,” Dana said. “I’m going to catheterise their bladders and measure the urine output.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m going to make some calls, wake some people up. Adam, you stay here, do whatever Dana needs you to do, okay – I’ll be back when I’m done raising hell.”

It was an hour before Gerard came back: he sent Adam off to bed and came over to look, again, at the three live prisoners. They had been catheterised, vein and bladder. Dana had set up bags for intravenous feeding. The dead ones were bagged and stacked.

“Can we do it?” he asked.

“If the kidneys are functioning, everything else is …cosmetic,” Dana told him. It was the wrong word, hopelessly wrong, but nothing about this was right. “But if they develop an infection, it won’t be – they won’t live through that. They’ll need to be under constant observation. It would be easier with four.”

“If I’d got four, you could have four.”

“You could let me have Richard,” Dana said. She had been thinking about this since before Gerard had left, though she hadn’t said a word to Adam about it. Even if he hadn’t practiced in five years: Benton and Ray were both good assistants, so was Adam, and any of the others would lend a hand – but Doctor Richard Kimble was a resource being wasted.

“No,” Gerard said without a beat. “Richard doesn’t get to this side of the house.”

“He’s be better at this than Ray or Benton – ”

“He’d probably be better than you. But you can’t have him.”

“Why not?”

“Are you challenging my decisions?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“You still can’t have him. This is what he used to do in the arena. Also, what we do with these guys is not something Richard needs to know about. I brought coffee.”

Gerard had brought two coffees, and a vanilla frosted doughnut, which he cut meticulously in two. “You will not discuss these prisoners with Richard. You will not ask his advice as a hypothetical. He is a very smart guy. He is not a very sane guy, but we’ll discuss that some other time. Richard doesn’t know these prisoners exist, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

They drank their coffee. The doughnut was too sweet, and a long way off fresh. “If we can’t do this, we can’t,” Gerard said finally. “But I’d like to think we can. Commerce weren’t expecting us to give them anything, they’re impressed we think we can. These guys got out of a company store, killed three guards on the way, the company wanted them split and ripped, Commerce wanted to put on a show, we can do ourselves a lot of good if we can give them more than they expected to get.” Gerard shrugged, slowly, tiredly. “But that’s not your problem. Don’t bust a gut over it, just do what you can.”

“Do you ever mind,” Dana asked, after a long while – the three prisoners were still breathing, still alive “ – that we do this for people who are the ones who least deserve it?”

There was a pause before Gerard replied. “How do you mean?”

“Killers. These people. Richard.”

Gerard looked at her, steadily, for a moment. He smiled. “No, I don’t mind.”

tbc

The Players: Ray

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:03:28 GMT

This is part two of the second section of the story (part one) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: Ray

The armoury was also the shooting range and the gym: soundproofed, it ran the whole length of the house downstairs. It was the one room in the building that all eight of them could be in at once without feeling crowded.

Benton had got them out of the house early: Ray hadn’t delayed them by much when he insisted on stopping at the lit-up Krispy-Kreme sign to buy a bag of fresh doughnuts.

If this was the day the Trenton case went down, seven to eleven households in a certain neighbourhood in Chicago had woken to discover police outside their homes, preventing anyone in the house from leaving.

“Okay,” Gerard said. He glanced round the room, as if counting heads, again. He’d brought the big thermos jug full of coffee, extra strong. “Thank you all for showing up so bright and early, it’s a pleasure to see your sunny smiling faces.” Ray found himself grinning, and hastily quelled it. Gerard sounded bleak and professional. “The governor approved the Trenton arrests, so we have not more than about fifteen minutes this morning to make my ground rules clear and give you all a chance to ask all the questions you’ve got.”

Gerard took a breath and went on, his voice rough. “I took delivery of a convicted criminal on Saturday. He killed his wife. He’s spent three years in the Chicago arena for his crime, but as the arena didn’t kill him in that time and this house is a Final destination, I bought his contract. His name was Doctor Richard Kimble. I take it that I’m not telling any of you anything you don’t already know.”

Ray nearly dropped the bag of doughnuts. Gerard had swung round, looking at all of them. “I wouldn’t think much of you all if you hadn’t tried to find out what’s a matter of public record. I don’t care. What I am making clear to you all now is that he belongs to me, he does not represent a threat to any of you, but we are going to follow some commonsense precautions from now on. Richard is not allowed past either of the secure doors into this part of the house. The secure doors and the door to this room are to be kept locked at all times, no exceptions, no excuses. And when you’re on the open side, your weapons are in this room. Clear?”

That was the rule: but none of them except Benny and George hadn’t at times just taken a coffee break or a meal break without bothering to formally put their guns away.

“Got it? Do you have any questions?”

“Where is he, right now?” Adam asked.

“He’s locked in the holding cell upstairs.”

“You say ‘commonsense precautions’, and you say ‘no weapons’,” Dana said. She was standing with her hands folded over each other, looking at Gerard with a calm face. “How dangerous is this man?”

“He’s not harmless. But the person he’s most likely to kill if he gets his hands on a gun is himself. I’m not going to be real happy with the owner of the gun if that happens. I’m going to be even less happy if someone else besides Richard gets killed. And you don’t want to make me unhappy, bambini.” Gerard paused, eyeing Dana, turning to glance at Willow. “Nobody has to be responsible for this slave but me,” he added. “If I’m not in the house, if anyone’s going to be alone in the house, march him to the holding cell on the bedroom floor and lock him in. Do that whenever you want.”

“Does this fellow represent… anything important to our work?” Giles talked worse than Benny, sometimes, but he asked good questions.

Gerard looked exasperated. “He’s a convicted slave at a Final destination,” he said. “There isn’t anyone much less important. Any more questions?”

“I think what Giles just asked is something we all want to know, sir,” George said. That got Gerard’s attention. He turned and glared. George looked back at him with a completely impassive expression: he didn’t often call Gerard “sir”, none of them did, but when George did, it was a clear danger signal.

“What is this man to you, sir? Why did you buy his contract? Why is he to be turned loose in this house?”

“I put up with a lot of undisciplined behaviour from you all.” Ray very nearly stepped back. Gerard wasn’t even looking at Ray, but the anger in his voice was almost palpable. “ None of you have the right to ask me who, or what, I screw.”

George’s voice was cold as ice. “I think you know, sir, that is not what we are asking.”

“I have a meeting this afternoon with the governor,” Gerard said, quiet and still angry. “At my last meeting with the governor, he wanted to know why I still don’t own a slave. I could have told him it was none of his business, but we don’t have time for that argument, so I bought one.”

“How long do you plan to keep him, sir?”

“I’ll keep him as long as I want.” Gerard paused. “Six months should satisfy any questions – if they’re still being asked. Who knows, we may get lucky.”

That joke – grim as it was – made Ray really grin: Benny swallowed a smile, and Giles and Will both got the same look of someone trying not to laugh. Even George’s eyes changed to a cold look of amusement. Only Dana and Adam did not appear to find it funny.

“But keep in mind, people – ” Gerard lifted his voice again “ – you can kill him if you have to, but you shouldn’t have to. Leave him alone, no fucking with his head or with any other part of his anatomy, and let’s just get our work done, okay? Who brought doughnuts?”

Three other people had: but Ray was the only one who had Krispy Kremes.

They had started calling it the Trenton case, because that was the family that had so many people involved: but most of the people on the list Gerard gave them weren’t called Trenton.

“Let the local cops do the arrests,” Gerard warned them. “I don’t want you guys getting your hands near this. Stay back, stay safe, make sure they follow the book, keep your heads.”

“Got it,” Ray said, though it sounded like the worst kind of day.

He and Benny spent most of their time in his car, as, one after the other, the police visited the houses in a suburban neighbourhood the south side of the lake, and gradually packed their holding vans full. They were not quite near enough to hear the protests – the occasional shout or yell – but near enough to watch the police procedure. Each house call had to have a social worker on hand to take charge of any minor children. Commerce would be coming in after the police and social services, to search the houses, but they didn’t have to watch that.

Five slaves had disappeared from this neighbourhood in mysterious circumstances in the past six months. Three of them were definitely runaways: they’d been recaptured, heading south, and interrogated by US Marshals in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Commerce presumed the other two had also run: the US Marshals office concurred.

Nineteen arrests. By past standards, eleven of them would eventually be released because the police could discover no evidence to justify bringing them to trial. Eight would be charged, prosecuted, and sentenced, and of those eight, one or two would end up being sentenced to slavery – probably to Final destinations. Who else would buy someone convicted of helping a slave to escape?

They got through the day somehow. Benny wasn’t much company on a day like this: he’d sit there like a handsome statue made of ice. If the police didn’t go by the book, he was great: but this bunch of cops all knew how to behave. They only had to get out of the car once, when there was a dispute about a kid who’d picked the wrong night to have a sleepover.

They’d done what they could, and Ray was full of anger. Eight families. Nineteen arrests. Most of them people who likely had no idea why the police were packing them into vans. Nine kids who were spending tonight at least in the care of the state.

The hall was empty, though all the cars were parked out front but Sam’s. Through the first locked door into the corridor that ran alongside the armoury, they could hear the faint noises of someone practicing in the shooting range.

Dana was finishing a pattern as they pushed the door open: Willow moved into position – she still looked like she had to think about it – and lifted her handgun, face locked in concentration. Benny took Ray’s gun away from him: he racked their firearms at home. Ray walked over to look: that was allowed, though no comments from anyone but Dana, since Giles had once reduced Willow to tears. Will’s tongue was sticking out through her teeth, Ray saw, and she was still stiff, she didn’t relax with the gun. But her pattern was a hell of a lot less ragged than it used to be. How she’d got past the standard firearms test only God and Gerard knew, and Gerard wasn’t telling.

They both pushed their earguards back, and looked at him.

“Where’s Sam?” Ray demanded.

“Still with the governor,” Dana said. “He left about two, said he’d be at least three hours.”

“Sam said we had to stay till he got back,” Willow said. She sounded clogged up, as if she had a cold.

“Oh, great.” Ray shifted on his feet. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Adam and George are checking Commerce reports in the lounge,” Dana said. “Giles is tracking contacts.”

“Where’s the scumbag?”

“Also in the lounge,” Dana said without a blink.

Ray nodded. He wouldn’t have wanted to take what he was feeling out on Willow.

Benny was at Ray’s shoulder, abruptly and almost noiselessly. He looked at the pattern Willow had shot. “That’s very good.”

“It’s not,” Willow said. “It’s too ragged and I still take ten times as long as everyone else does.”

“No, it’s much better,” Benny said. “You’ve been working very hard.”

“We’re done on the Trenton case, aren’t we?” Willow said abruptly. “I mean, we’re …done.”

“Yes,” Benton said.

Dana looked at Willow: she might have said something, but Willow said, her voice really ragged now, “We did it. I heard it on the news two hours ago.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. He met her eyes, for the first time actually feeling that he liked her, the spoiled California kid with the numbers talent: they’d needed someone like her, but she’d acted like this was a game. “Yeah, Benny and I watched, the police did it by the book. Commerce are searching their houses now.”

“No one ever said it was going to be easy,” Willow said, sounding as if she was reminding herself of something. She flipped her earguards down, and said to Dana, “One more set?”

Dana nodded, slid her own earguards back, and gave Ray and Benny a look: they both retreated.

“I want coffee,” Ray said. They headed back through the hall, still empty – the lounge door was closed. They had reports to write.

Richard Kimble came out of the kitchen, holding three mugs of coffee in both hands. He saw them and stood still.

Ray stared at him. Saturday afternoon, he’d seemed just like any tired man pushed beyond endurance: they saw a lot of them. He looked no different now, dressed in baggy sweats, but a lot less tired: since then the scumbag had two nights in a nice comfy warm bed, and knowing Sam, four square meals a day. Sam would feed a rabid dog before he shot it.

Nineteen people would be sleeping in cells tonight. Four of them were kids who counted as adults, over the age of ten.

“Is there more coffee in the kitchen, Richard?” Benny asked. Benny would be polite to a rabid dog before he shot it: hell, Benny would be polite to a rabid dog before it bit him.

Richard nodded. He didn’t move: he would have had to brush past them to get to the lounge,and Ray knew with a rush like a sugar high that Richard didn’t want to: he was standing like a statue with a clutch of mugs because he was afraid they’d do something to him if he moved too close to them.

And I might, because I just shoot rabid dogs. I’m not nice to them.

There was a mark like a day-old bruise on the side of Richard’s jaw.

Benny tugged at his arm. Ray moved with him, glancing at him. “I expect they’re waiting for that coffee,” Benny said, and Richard went on down the hall, walking steadily, not looking back.

“He bought him because he doesn’t have to care what he does to him,” Ray said to Benny in the kitchen.

“What was that, Ray?”

There was what must be a fresh pot of coffee, with three mugfuls gone from it: . Ray filled them each a mug.

“Sam. He got a convict slave – a scumbag – because he doesn’t have to care what he does to him, it’s better than what he deserves.”

“Are you sure?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ray drank his coffee.

Benny said nothing. He sat down at the table, with his coffee mug between his hands, and looked up at Ray. They both heard the back door opening, and Benny said, “Sam.”

“Yeah.” Ray found another mug, and filled it.

Gerard came in with a rush of cold air. “Is that your coffee? Because I’m gonna drink it.”

“How was your meeting with the governor?” Benny asked.

“Fine, fine. He’s got a new bodyslave. Asked me where mine was. I told him mine wasn’t presentable. Where is Richard?”

“Taking coffee to the others in the lounge,” Benny said.

“We got any doughnuts left?”

There was one paper sack left on the counter: Ray checked it, and found one battered cruller and one vanilla frosted, from two different bakeries,and a lot of sugar crumbs. He offered it to Sam, who took the cruller, and ate it in three fast bites, washed down with coffee.

“You did a good job today.”

Benny looked up, with an odd, almost cynical smile: he hadn’t smiled like that five years ago.

“You both did,” Sam said. “Everyone’s alive, and the police didn’t take anyone I didn’t give them. Doesn’t always happen that way. I don’t have to raise hell with the cops, and you know how much I hate raising hell. Good job. Now go on home.”

Benny stood up. “When do you want us in tomorrow?”

“Late. Sleep in. Take care of each other. Go.”

tbc

I don't think anyone's reading this here (if you are, comment to let me know and I'll fix the links) so this is backup only.

The Players: Willow

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:43:47 GMT

This is part one of the second section of the story that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo.

The Players: Willow

Willow reached out for another set of files and her hand met, instead of the mouse, a hot mug of coffee.

Giles was standing at her elbow, she realised a moment later: he had put the mug down on the mouse pad, and was nursing his own mug of tea. He was looking down at her with raised eyebrows. “Dare I ask what, exactly, you have just spent five hours researching …on the first full day off we have had in weeks?”

“Five hours?” Willow stared at the clock. It was nearly 11. “Er… more like seven hours.” She drank the coffee, looking up at Giles. “Well… eight. I couldn’t sleep.”

Giles sat down. “Well, was it worth it?”

“I don’t know.” Willow looked at the collection of files on her screen. “I found out who Richard is… was.”

For a moment Giles looked exceptionally interested, and then his face flattened out into customary calm.“Richard who?”

“Giles,” Willow protested.

“You mean the fellow that Sam seems to have… bought.”

“I thought he was very handsome.” Willow ducked her head to hide a grin.

“I suppose,” Giles said. His tone of voice said he was humouring her. “If you like that kind of rather obvious masculinity.”

“Maybe Sam does. Or maybe he bought him for some other reason.”

“Well?” Giles waited. “Are you going to tell me who he is?”

“His name’s Richard David Kimble,” Willow said proudly. “He’s a vascular surgeon. Or he was. He killed his wife five years ago. I found his employment record at Chicago Memorial Hospital, and I just got hold of his trial transcript, and I found the news feed for the night his wife was murdered, and loads of other stuff. He did a tour of duty in the Marines twenty-five years ago.”

“He killed his wife?”

“Yes. Lady Helen Waverly.”

Giles looked startled, and then shook his head. “You know, Americans still bewilder me,” he said.”You fight a revolution to get rid of the British ruling classes, and then you turn around and invent your own. ‘Lady Helen’, indeed. What did this vascular surgeon do to her?”

“He bashed her skull in and then he shot her.”

“Did he,” Giles said, very dryly. “That seems a little …excessive.”

Willow made a face. “Well, he might have shot her and then bashed her skull in. The medical evidence in the pathologist’s report I read said it couldn’t be proved either way, but she’d died within about five minutes of her skull being broken.”

“Willow, do you ever think about what you’re saying?”

“Of course I do!” Willow thought about it. “Do you suppose Sam’s all right?”

“I have every confidence in him,” Giles said, dryly. “How did you find all this information on ‘Richard’? Are you sure it’s the same man?”

“Giles, it was the coolest thing!” Willow brightened up again. “I drew his face on the paintbook, till I had it right, and then I shopped the face down to the Commerce website’s basic beauty standards and then I searched on the pattern his face made with the name ‘Richard’ as one of the criteria, and there were only three slaves in the whole Commerce database who matched his facial pattern and name and two of them were the wrong age. No, it’s definitely him.”

“I understood not one word of that.” Giles lifted his hand. “No, don’t explain. Where did Sam buy him?”

“The Chicago arena,” Willow said.

Giles stared, mouth open. Mostly when Giles faked being startled, Willow could tell he was faking: this time she was sure he wasn’t.

“That …place?” Giles said finally, in a strangled voice. “Are you sure? Oh, dear Lord.” He got up, looked around, and found the phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“George, then Benton – we have to get out to the house and warn him – ” Suddenly Giles flung the phone down. “I’m an idiot,” he declared. “Of course Sam knows where he bought him from. But why did he buy him?”

“Well, people do,” Willow said. “Not convict slaves, that’s weird, but if Sam didn’t live where he does, he could have three or four slaves. If we didn’t live here – ” she flapped her hands at the tiny apartment – “we’d have to have at least one between us.”

Giles finished his tea, and went over to the kitchen counter to rinse out his mug. “Did you ever want a slave?” he asked, not looking at her.

“Yes,” Willow said. “Not now,” she added, clarifying. “But you know. It’s like asking ‘Did you ever want a car?’ or ‘Did you ever watch a baseball game?’ It’s how normal people live. You get a job, you get a car, you get a house, you get some slaves.”

Giles laughed, abruptly. “Living the American dream,” he said. “Do you think that’s why Sam bought this ‘Richard’? A murderer and a vascular surgeon – who survived for five years in an environment designed to kill him as bloodily as possible for mass entertainment?”

“No,” Willow said. “I said it was weird.” She looked down at her laptop. The screensaver had flicked on: the US Marshals star, spinning across the screen. “Maybe Richard’s got information on a case.”

Giles switched the kettle on. “And Sam’s planning to run an interrogation without any support? I hardly think that’s likely.” His tone of voice added But I wouldn’t put it past him.

“No,” Willow agreed, to both spoken and unspoken comments. She watched Giles. “The Trenton case is a big one,”she added, wanting to sound casual. “I gave the list to Sam.”

“Yes,” Giles said. “If you recall, I gave you some of the names.” He was looking in one of the cupboards.

“Yes,” Willow said.

“Is that why you couldn’t sleep?” Giles turned round and leaned back against the counter, looking at her.

“Yes,” Willow said. She looked down at the star turning lazily on her laptop screen, and moved her hand, making it vanish. The temporary access she had set up to search the Commerce database was about to expire: she began logging out and closing down, deleting her tracks as she went.

When she looked up again, Giles had come back from the kitchen area and was standing with his hands shoved into his pockets. He cleared his throat. “No one ever said it was going to be easy.”

“I know that.”

“It is our day off. Shall we go out? I’ll buy you lunch.”

The doorbell rang. Giles glanced at his watch. “I was hoping we could get out of here before this happened.”

“Before what happened?” Willow shut down her laptop completely and pushed it away.

“You know perfectly well,” Giles threw over his shoulder, and, as he opened the door, “Hello, Ray. Benton. We were just talking about you.”

“You were?” Ray glanced up at Giles as he came in, and broke into a beaming smile as he passed him. “Hey, Will!”

“No,” said Giles, and closed the door.

She and Giles had been Sam’s last recruits: the rest of the team had all been working together for over a year by that time. Ray had spent the first six months staring at her suspiciously, and the next six months being ebulliently effusive, while Benton was always exquisitely polite. And they were the normal pair of the team: an Italian-American and a Canadian-American, married for seven years. Chicago was far too cold, and the apartment that Sam had found for Giles felt cramped after the expansive rooms of California. Willow liked Dana, but both Adam and George scared her. Sam Gerard didn’t scare her, though she sometimes wondered why not.

Ray came over, gave her a close-up look of practiced admiration, and shook his head. “You look terrible, Will, you need to take care of yourself. You don’t eat right, you don’t sleep right – you want to come over to my house for dinner tonight? I’ll make pizzas. Giles, you should come too,” he added.

Benton had shaken hands with Giles, politely refused tea, and offered his hand to Willow.

“You want to know about ‘Richard’.” Willow said.

“How did you know that?” Ray looked honestly surprised.

Willow decided not to make the I’m a federal agent, I know everything joke that had occurred to her. Benton was intensely protective of Ray.

“Because you’re here,” Giles said.

Benton and Ray turned towards Giles; their faces carrying, for an instant, identical expressions of embarrassed apology. “Well, yeah,” Ray said.

“It is rather unusual,” Benton said.

“Unusual,” Ray said, sharply, sarcastically. “Look,” he was talking to Willow again. “I’ve worked with Sam Gerard now… six years. He’s never bought a slave. He’s had them sometimes in his house, you know, he’s got a holding cell upstairs – but there was always a reason. We always knew about the reason. This guy, he’s wearing a convict collar, Benton said –

“Yes,” Willow confirmed.

“ – and Sam just drives out yesterday afternoon, picks him up like a box of chocolates, and dumps him on us? Who is he? What’s he doing there? What are we going to do with him?”

“There is the obvious reason,” Giles said.

“No,” Ray said, vehemently.

Benton looked at him.

“Not Sam Gerard. Anyway. Will, can you do whatever it is you do to government databases and maybe find out who this guy is?”

“It is my day off,” Willow said.

“Yeah, what can I say? Make you the Vecchio Special Pizza for dinner? Take you out to lunch? What can I do for you?”

“I said that I wasn’t sure we should try to find out if Sam doesn’t want us to know,” Benton said.

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t want to know.”

“I did find out who he is,” Willow said. She told them. Benton’s face went blank: Ray nodded sharply. “I remember that case. Big story, five years ago. So this is where the scumbag ended up.” He looked in a strange way relieved.

The doorbell rang. Giles lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I wonder if we should put a sign outside?”

“We were driving out to see Melissa,” Dana said. “And we wondered if…” Her voice trailed off. The apartment was effectively one room: the bedroom had been, Giles said, a walk-in closet in an earlier incarnation. Even with the pull-down bed in its upright position, with four people the main room was crowded.

“No, come in,” Giles said; with six it was over-crowded. “Willow and I were just going out for lunch,” he added, over-loudly and over-emphatically. “Why don’t you tell Dana and Adam what they came for?”

“His name’s Richard David Kimble,” Willow said.

They were gone, and Willow and Giles were about to leave, when Giles said – hand on door stopping her from opening it – “Why didn’t George show?”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t think he needs my help.”

“No… perhaps not.”

Willow had been tested by the USNA federal government years earlier: she had known since she was fourteen that if she wanted a job working for the feds she could have it. Back then, Giles was the school librarian, a friendly, distant man: Willow hung out with the nerds and the smokers and didn’t have much to do with him, until the thing happened that killed Xander.

In California it would still be warm enough to go without a sweater: here, though it was only late autumn, they muffled themselves in scarves and gloves. This time last year, Willow thought, and realised she was almost beyond thinking that.

“We left Sunnydale a year ago next week?” she said.

Giles glanced at her. He’d owned a slave, one he’d bought in LA before he came to work in Sunnydale. After a couple of years, Willow had realised she wasn’t really a slave. She had been killed last year.

On this day last year.

Giles glanced away. Willow put her hand in his. “I’m sorry,” she said, out loud. “I just – I wasn’t thinking about the date.” She took a breath of the cold air, and said formally, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Giles looked down at her again, and put his arm round her shoulders in a brief, almost formal sideways hug. “Thank you.”

The girl had …died, and the thing had happened, and they’d destroyed the school, and she and Giles had got out of Sunnydale alive, and then Giles had got them to Chicago and a contact there… and a week later Sam Gerard had interviewed them both, rapid-fire questions at each of them separately and both of them together, and Willow had ended up working for the federal government after all. She just hadn’t expected it to be the US Marshals service.

There was an email from Sam when they got back: Monday morning briefing in armoury at eight fifteen. Don’t be late. Someone bring doughnuts.

tbc

I'm thinking, no one is reading this here, so not worth my time making sure all the links are to JF instead of IJ?

The Network

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:52:24 GMT

I linked to this story by darkrose, My Sight Grows Stronger (IJ link), in the introductory notes to The Games. Partly because this really impressed me, and partly because I felt it was a good introductory stand-alone piece to read about how the Keptverse works. This story is my effort to do something similiar, and was inspired by a discussion that I had with darkrose here (IJ link).

In summary: the Keptverse is set in an America in which debt slavery exists. In the real Keptverse (which is mostly on livejournal), the stories are all RPF. What I am writing here is fanfic on the Keptverse: fictional characters living in the universe of poisontaster's creation.

The Network

If anyone had been looking in the window, which no one was, it might have looked too formal to be a meeting of friends: two people on the couch at one side the room, three people on chairs at the other side. A coffee pot on the table, and cups, and a plate of tidily-arranged cookies: no one was eating or drinking.

The two on the couch were a married couple. Matching rings, and the kind of shared speech patterns that come from living with another person for years, for decades.

"…you see, it's all so difficult. The bills… we don't have much, but we manage what we have. We try. We have a son, he's in Florida now, he's doing well, but he has a family of his own…"

"Then we heard of you people. Your organisation. We hoped we could join."

The three people on the chairs looked at each other. "We don't have an organisation," the younger woman said slowly. "I think the simplest thing we can do now is to explain who we are, and how we live, and… shall I start?" She glanced at the other two, and across the room at the couple.

"My name is Melissa. I don't own slaves. I don't pay fines, either, because I make sure that each year what I earn is just underneath the threshold income. My parents never owned slaves, either: nor do either of my brothers.

"My mother brought me up to believe that owning people is wrong. That there is no good way to be someone who buys or sells other human beings. But that's not something we ever hear in the media or we see on TV or we learn about in school. Our system is justified as a means of everyone providing what they can – people too poor to support themselves provide their labour, their bodies, as slaves, and people wealthy enough to support others are required to buy slaves and take care of them.

“But even when I was a kid that didn't seem to make any sense – a person can be a slave because they were born to slave parents, or because they were sold into slavery as a child – and everyone knows that most slaves get bought by the corporations for factory labour, that the ones we see and hear about who are owned by individuals are a minority. There isn’t any way for one person, for any of us, to change this system. We can’t even opt out of it completely – what we wear, things we use every day, they’re made in factories using slave labour. Everyone knows if they think about it that a slave in a factory can be worked till they die.

"We don't advocate changing the system – there's no 'we' to advocate that. Most of us probably do as individuals support the legislation that will make individual slaves live better, though there’s no requirement to do that, and some of us are abolitionists – if you've read my blog, you know I am - but we're not an abolitionist group.

“We're not a group. We're just people who know each other who don't want to be slaves and who don't want to own slaves. We're a network of friends, not an organisation that you can join. There's no membership list, there's no rules – beyond the commonsense one, that if you own a slave you're no longer a part of our network. We’ve all become part of this network for different reasons – for me, it’s a family tradition I feel I’m carrying forward.” She glanced at the other woman “Mary Beth, do you want to tell your story?"

The older woman had been sitting quite still: she nodded and smiled briefly. "Hello. I've been friends with Melissa for nine years now. My name is Mary Beth. I’ve never bought a slave, but I have sold one. My son. His name was Michael, and he was five years old.”

“I expect you wonder – how could a mother sell her child? I wondered that myself. For eight years I never talked about him – I never told anyone, not even his brother, what we’d done. We got into financial trouble, you see – just one bill after another. Harvey had been out of work for a while with a back injury – he lost his job just before Michael was born – and we just never managed to catch up on the payments, even after Harvey could work again. The interest kept building. Finally the finance company told us, they didn’t see any other option – either they foreclosed on us for debt, sold us and had our children become wards of the state, or we’d have to sell one of our boys.”

“They told me I’d be valuable enough to almost cover the debt. But I was the only one bringing in a steady wage. They told Harvey, because of his back injury, he’d only be valuable if he was sold to a Final destination – you know what that means?” Mary Beth looked at the couple, her voice rising in a slight intonation, as if she were asking them if they remembered a name. “They explained it to us. A ‘Final’ destination is one where the slave is intended to be killed – medical experimentation, or the arena. That would have paid off a large part of the debt, down to something manageable, so long as I could keep working. But they wanted us to sell them Michael or Harvey Junior – they were more valuable. Either of them would cover the whole of our debts. They kept telling us, one of your sons, just one.

“So we sold them Michael. We told Harvey Junior his brother had been killed. He was eleven, he seemed to forget about Michael completely very soon. We paid off all our debts, we put the rest of the money aside to send Harvey Junior to college, and Harvey and I never talked about Michael again. Harvey Junior joined the Marines when he was 17, and we didn’t see him for a couple of years. Come to that, I guess Harvey and I never talked about anything much at all after that.

“I used to go over our choices, even though it was too late, trying to figure out if we’d had any other way out. I couldn’t have let them have Harvey Junior. He was such a good looking kid – I know all mothers say this, but Harvey really was – and he was already eleven. It seemed like it was Michael or me, and they kept saying I wouldn’t fetch enough to pay off all the debt, that Harvey and the boys would be in financial trouble again soon. Michael was a cute kid, they said some well-off couple would buy him to be a playmate for their son. But I kept thinking – as the years went by, as Michael got older – ” Mary Beth’s voice had been calm and even: without losing control, she sounded high and wavery “ – what happens to those playmates when they stop being cute little kids?”

Mary Beth paused. When she started to speak again, her voice was back to calm and level. “Maybe Harvey was making the same calculations in his head. We never talked about it. But when Harvey Junior came home on leave for the first time, he told us he remembered Michael, he wanted to know what really happened to his baby brother. Harvey walked out. I never saw him again.

“So that’s when I told Harvey Junior about Michael. That he wasn’t dead, he was a slave somewhere. And I haven’t seen him – Harvey Junior – since. I hear from him sometimes – he’s still in the Marines, he’s still got me listed as his next of kin – but he doesn’t want to see me, and I can’t blame him. I sold his brother. I sold my son. Michael is twenty-two years old, and there isn’t a day of his life that I haven’t thought of him.

“I don’t have any one else to lose – Harvey Junior picked the Marines because they won’t let Commerce take one of their own. I don’t want any mother, any other person, ever to have to make the choice I did. To lose their child like that. These friendship networks – they existed before the Internet made it easier for us – but all they are, is an agreement: if someone needs help to keep themselves and their family together, we all do what we can. We don’t let our friends have to choose between selling themselves or selling their children.”

Mary Beth moved her hand to point at the man sitting next to her. “Francis, do you want to tell your story?” She brought her hand back against her mouth.

The man was noticeably older than either of the women. “Hello. My name is Francis, and I’m a Jesuit priest.”

From the careful looks, neither of the couple had ever knowingly met a priest before: Francis smiled, leaning forward a little, his hands clasped.

“I am here with permission, though not the encouragement, of my bishop. The Jesuit order doesn’t support Melissa’s network of friends. I am Melissa’s parish priest, and I help her friends in various ways that are compatible with my vocation as a priest.

”I’m not here to preach a sermon about slavery. I’m here, I suppose, partly to talk about what we do in my parish, and partly to talk about the changes I’ve seen in this country since I was a boy.

“I was an army chaplain in the Korean war, more than forty years ago. The law allowing people to be sold for debt existed then, but it wasn’t as much used. Melissa and even Mary Beth are too young to remember – ” He smiled at them, with indescribable sweetness “ – but I recall when a bank would do almost anything to prevent their customers from having to become debt slaves.”

“The USNA is a much whiter country now that it was. When the laws on debt slavery began to be imposed much more stringently, in the 1950s, coloured people were the first targets. Not because they were worse at managing their money – but because the banks were more willing to foreclose on them, less willing to offer them terms to work their way out. The owners of successful businesses were popular targets. I remember when there were entire districts in Chicago that were coloured or mostly coloured: they were called ‘bad neighbourhoods’, but we don’t hear that term any more. Most of those people have gone now – they were sold up, sold off, decades ago.”

“My parish is smaller than it was forty years ago, and far fewer people come to confession. I began to notice some time ago that if one of my parishioners started to do well, and became able to afford to buy a slave, they would stop coming to confession: in order to confess your sins and be forgiven, you see, a person must have a firm purpose of amendment: and I do believe that my people understood too well that however kindly they treated their property – and I don’t think they were deliberately cruel – they were constantly committing sins they could not repent because they could not stop without selling their slave, and selling their slave meant returning that person to a life even worse.

“I’m sorry, I’m being tedious, and I promised you I wouldn’t preach a sermon. This is how I came to be part of Melissa’s network of friends: I began to talk to my parishioners I saw beginning to do well financially, beginning to lift themselves into prosperity, about how they might help others – about how they might avoid the sin of treating another person as property.

“The difficulty is that people are so afraid of becoming slaves themselves. I heard a lot about that fear. Melissa’s family had stayed just below the benchmark with less fear than most, but they’re a large family – and they all would chip in to help each other, they weren’t afraid to ask for help when they didn’t need a great deal – sometimes that by itself can stop small problems from getting bigger.

“I run a soup kitchen three nights a week, and part of our agreement as friends is that everyone tries to eat there or volunteer there at least once a week. We have a freecycle network for clothes and furniture, we even have a little food co-op – we do try, mostly, just to keep each other on an even keel, so that no one goes into debt over the regular necessities of life. Not everyone who makes use of these parish services is one of our friends, of course – they’re open to anyone in the neighbourhood. So if you’d like to come along one evening and help us sort clothes, or make soup, you can do that without any commitment at all, just to help out.”

Francis stopped speaking. He looked at Melissa, and back at the couple who had listened to them for so long.

For a long moment, the couple stared back at them. They were holding hands.

“We’ve taken up enough of your time.” “Thank you so much.” “Are you sure you won’t have coffee?” “Well, good night.”

Outside, walking away in the darkness, Mary Beth said quietly “They were infiltrators, weren’t they?”

“Thank God the two of you followed my lead,” Melissa said, just as quietly. “If they weren’t wired by Commerce, they surely had a recorder switched on somewhere. None of us said anything actionable. Though you came close, Francis.”

“Oh, I just said what you would expect a moralizing old bore to say. No one minds a priest preaching religion, or an old man talking about how things were better when he was young.”

“It was more than that, wasn’t it?” Mary Beth asked. She didn’t look at Francis.

“I live in hope,” Francis said. “Even they may be redeemed.”

end

----
Author notes

What I am envisioning is that in this America, the debt peonage common in the American South after the Civil War was enforced by legislation state by state across the country (poisontaster's Keptverse the US is USNA, comprising the whole North American continent) and became federal in the 1930s - this form of slavery is what USNA has instead of Social Security. So this is my talking-heads story.

When Francis says "the country is much whiter" I was partly thinking of debt peonage, but I also was making a joke on the USNA in the original Keptverse being inhabited entirely by actors from prime time TV series and films. Yeah, it would be whiter than the real world America, wouldn't it?

Also, Harvey killed himself, the night Harvey Junior came home on leave. That was why Mary Beth finally told Harvey Junior about Michael. I initially wrote that down, and then I thought no: Mary Beth wouldn't tell that part of the story to two strangers.

The Games - Part Six

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:13:22 GMT

This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. There is the beginnings of a cast photo list here.

Part Six

Kimble sat with the fresh icepack against his face for a while, and then Sam walked him round the house – the accessible parts of it. Downstairs that was the hall, and the kitchen and a large lounge with a big TV and a wall that was covered with bookshelves. You could see the wall from the windows, if you looked. Kimble tried not to look.

There were two doors on the other side of the hall, both closed, both locked. One or both must lead to the larger part of the house, the part mostly windowless.

Upstairs, Sam’s bedroom: two other bedrooms, each with their own bathroom – “My kids use these if they have to stay over,” Sam said. “Stay out of them if they’re being used.” – another door off into the windowless part of the house, also locked, and the holding cell.

The holding cell’s small window was so high on the wall of the room that it was impossible to see the outer wall from it.

You pull these kind of stunts on me, I will have you locked up.

In here? There was nothing in here, and Kimble wanted to be shut in here more than he wanted anything. Where he couldn’t see the wall that killed. Locked away from his owner.

Sam lived in a fortress. Alone, in a fortress. Or at least, with only his prisoners for company.

Why did you buy me?

The awful, twisted answer seemed to be: for company. I want to have sex with you might be how Sam put it, even to himself, but maybe it was for the kind of companionship as some of the wealthy parents Kimble had known bought for their children: their own slaves their own age, their very own best friend to be raised with them and whipped instead of them. A pet, friend, toy, companion.

His attention had wavered away from Sam for only a few seconds, as he looked around the holding cell; but Sam was looking directly at him when he looked back at his owner.

“You like it in here,” Sam said. He sounded genuinely surprised.

Kimble stared back at him. The holding cell was fully accessible to his owner, as accessible as Kimble himself: it was only a brief lapse of imagination that had let him think the cell door would keep Sam out.

Sam didn’t ask for an explanation. He looked at Kimble thoughtfully, and rubbed his hand across his mouth and up over his face. “Well, that’s good,” he said, and after a beat, “I guess that’s good.” He gestured Kimble out of the cell, and shut the door.

“Richard. Tell me before you go in there.”

Kimble looked at him.

“If you’re comfortable in your room, if you like it in there, fine, go there. But you can’t get out of there until I let you out, so don’t go in there without telling someone.”

Kimble nodded.

“Okay. I need to get you kitted up. Downstairs.”

There was an untidy desk at the far end of the lounge: Kimble hadn’t looked at it earlier, he had been too busy not looking at the windows. He looked at it when his ears registered the familiar sound of a laptop booting up: Sam gestured at him to come over.

“I figure, you need jeans, two or three pair – what’s your inseam?”

Kimble told him, almost by reflex. He tried to move to see the screen, and Sam moved his chair and set the laptop on the desk, skewed so it was pointed towards him. “Don’t ever try to stand behind me, Richard, I don’t like it.” He pointed at the screen. The logo in the corner was a company that Kimble recalled: Chicago Memorial Hospital had bought clothing for the hospital’s servitors from it. Blue jeans, loose fit: working clothes. “Three pair jeans, or you want a pair of chinos, too?”

Kimble stared. Sam reached out a hand and pulled him closer, till Kimble was standing between his spread knees: and briefly, briskly, his hands marked a circle round Kimble’s waist.”Jesus, you’re thin. Okay, you get a belt, or they’ll fall off your skinny ass. Jeans or chinos?” He dropped his hands, giving Kimble a light shove: as he stepped back, Sam reached for the laptop. “I want to hear a decision now, Richard, don’t keep me waiting.”

“Chinos,” Kimble said after a moment. He was hardly aware of what he was saying.

“Chinos. Okay. Pick a colour.” He pointed at the screen. His eyes were very dark as he looked up at Kimble.

“Brown.”

“Brown it is. Okay.” His fingers tapped over the keyboard. “And you need a couple of sweaters, a jacket, shirts, socks, underwear - ” He laughed suddenly, with genuine surprise. “Hey. Look at this.”

Kimble stared at the screen. This webpage offered a choice of male underwear: boxers, briefs, boxer briefs, jockstraps, thongs.

Sam was still chuckling. “Who the hell buys thongs in bulk for their workers?”

“Brothels,” Kimble said.

That killed the laugh. Sam’s face sobered up in a grim second. He looked up at Kimble, and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

When he pointed at the screen again, he had reached checkout: “See if there’s anything I’ve missed.”

When Kimble said nothing, Sam looked up at him again. “Come on, don’t be shy.”

Kimble was staring at the list of clothing. He was shaking. He put his hands against his legs, palm flat against the fabric. His owner’s. The cloth, and the flesh under it, and the hands touching it. He was voiceless with too many feelings:

He had been part of a committee meeting a few years ago to sign off the buying contracts of clothing for the hospital’s slave workers: he remembered sitting through the administrator’s argument that it was poor economy to buy from the lowest-price site, they should use this one, the materials were better quality and the clothing sturdier;

Sam’s hands on him, checking his size, dressing him: his possession, for which he bought clothing: a responsible owner, thinking ahead, not just for a day, a week: Sam was planning to dress his slave for months, for longer;

The list of clothing was far more than he’d had to use or think about in five years;

The list of clothing would fit into one drawer in a chest in his old home;

“It’s fine,” Kimble said, and heard his voice come out harsh and shaking. Sam whipped his head round and stood up, quick as a cat.

Don’t fight, don’t flinch, don’t speak, don’t die. Live. Kimble made himself smile, forced himself to say out loud in a better tone: “Thank you, Sam.”

“Okay,” Sam said, his voice curiously even. He was staring at Kimble assessingly. “Okay. Go sit down over there, Richard, I’ll be done here in a few minutes.” He waved at the group of chairs at the far end of the lounge. “Go.”

Kimble walked away, down the room. The chairs and a long couch were arranged around the TV screen, with a low wooden table in the middle. He sat down on one of the chairs. The table was scarred: the marks of hot mugs, a stain that could have been left by spilled wine, a small burn as if someone had spilled hot ash. It was a solid table, good sturdy seasoned oak, and the wood had been polished and repolished since the damage was done. Someone had taken care of it, made sure it stayed looking as good as possible. Kimble reached out one hand and traced the nearest scar with his fingertip. This table had no choice about who it belonged to, either.

The chair was next to one of the bookcases: the lower two shelves were full of DVDs, not quite tidily shelved. After a couple of minutes, it sank in that they looked familiar. Kimble glanced up the room – Sam was still sitting at the desk – and slid one of them out just far enough to see the cover picture.

They were British DVDs. Old editions, imported from before the law changed, from the look of them – anyone who had bought them legally could legally keep them, they just couldn’t sell or trade them. He and Helen had had twenty-three between them, most of them Helen’s, a gift from her parents, to avoid (Helen’s dad had said) leaving them in their will. Sam had well over a hundred. Kimble slid the DVD back and put both his hands between his knees, and sat with bowed head.

The obvious way for an employee of the federal government to have so many British DVDs in his home was by confiscation. If they were taken from someone who meant to sell them illegally, they were supposed to be destroyed, but for someone with federal access, there would be ways round that. Sam obviously thought himself safe enough to have them here, beyond reach of any ordinary police search. A more regular collection of DVDs was stored beside the TV, in the usual storage rack. These were out of sight, even if not hidden, but who’d search the private quarters of a deputy US marshal? These were contraband. Sam owned contraband.

“Richard.”

Kimble hadn’t heard Sam approach. He looked up, and would have got to his feet, but Sam waved him down and sat down on the couch.

“We’ll have lunch, and you’re going to eat it,” Sam said without preamble. “Don’t care how long it takes.”

Kimble nodded.

“You said you could cook, right?”

“Yes, Sam.”

Sam nodded. He caught at Kimble’s hand, and got up, pulling Kimble up with him. “Good. Let’s see what you can do.”

It seemed impossible to put himself through the same mill twice. Handling a knife to chop tomatoes, splitting up a chorizo
, Kimble didn’t think about using it until afterwards: Sam wasn’t standing at his elbow this time, but moving round the kitchen fetching materials and ingredients, stacking utensils in the washer.

Shift-change at the arena wouldn’t be for another hour. Staying awake through shift-change, on to the evening, that was going to be the problem.

“This is good,” Sam said approvingly, of the stew. “Woulda been better with cornbread.”

“I can make cornbread.”

“No one from outside Texas makes good cornbread. Don’t tell me you got a Texan-style recipe, I hate that shit.” Sam sounded amused. No, Sam sounded friendly.

Kimble went on eating. Sam had served him a plateful, and a big chunk of bread. He was tired, but he didn’t suppose that Sam had been joking when he said he meant Kimble to finish it. Everything had been clear when he had just wanted to die: but he couldn’t make himself want to die. Mostly, almost against his will, he wanted to live, even when he couldn’t think of a reason why he should want to.

Kill Sam?

Sam was looking at him, frowning, visibly wanting a response.

Kimble swallowed what was in his mouth, and said “Yeah, I – I used to bake cornbread with fresh corn kernels and chiles.” The words came out of his mouth in a shaky monotone.

Sam seemed not to notice. “You did your own cooking?”

“Sometimes. I liked to cook.” His voice was still wavering.

“Yeah, me too. I love to cook. I meet people these days, their parents owned a cook, they want to own a cook, they never spent more than five minutes in the kitchen in their lives. I’m going to make a big pot of stew for the freezer later on today, but once we’re done here, right now, we’re gonna watch a game – I need a rest after this morning, and from the look of you you do too.”

Kimble looked down at his bowl. The Games began at one o’clock, and went on till four. The bloodiest events began about an hour in, when the audience in the area was worked up and baying so loud the staff in the white room could hear them through the walls. Kimble had never thought about the regular broadcasts until five years ago, never caught more than a couple of minutes on a news broadcast, certainly never considered going to the arena –

“Richard.” Sam’s voice snapped.

Kimble looked up, leash tugged.

“I said, we’re going to watch a game. The Redbirds are playing the D-Backs, Busch Stadium. You follow the Cubs?”

Despite everything, that was almost funny. “Not recently.”

Briefly, Sam grinned. “You haven’t missed much.”

Sam sat down at one end of the couch, and patted his leg. “Lie down. Put your head here.”

Kimble folded himself down, tense and awkward. He felt like he should have known this was going to happen: yet he had failed to imagine it. He lay still, feeling himself shudder, as Sam shifted, getting comfortable. “You cold?”

“No, Sam.”

“Relax. We’re not going to do anything.” Sam’s hand patted him on the shoulder, and reached for the remote control.

Kimble couldn’t see the screen from this angle, and Sam seemed to like the volume too low to properly hear the sportscaster. He was trying to stay awake, and knew he’d fail.

After the game, Sam brewed coffee, and – he hadn’t been joking – made about a gallon of beef and vegetable stew, which went into freezer cartons, labelled and dated. It was casual, easy work, but the day was moving down towards evening, and his owner’s bed.

Practically, a prisoner on remand could be raped by the guards or by other prisoners more easily than a slave in the arena could: the arena management preferred slaves to be harmed only in front of a paying audience, and expected the staff to keep them working, not take amusement breaks. But a prisoner might be expected to fight back, even if a guard approached him: there would be some kind of negotiation, even if it were carried out with more threats than promises. A slave was accessible, that was all. Kimble had stood naked in front of arena staff who had argued with each other over whether they had time to use him, and if it was even worthwhile.

Sam’s arm round him, hard against his chest: Sam’s hands on him, inarguable. The hardness and the thrust and the pulsing hot flood of semen, making use of him.

After supper, Sam poured them each another glass of bourbon, one finger for Kimble, three for himself: Kimble drank his share obediently, wishing it was more. Blurred wasn’t enough.

Sam took his arm and walked him upstairs. When they stopped, it was outside the holding cell door. “So, where do you want to spend the night?”

If this was a joke, it …didn’t sound like one. Kimble stared at Sam, knowing what he should say. He nodded, after what felt like a long moment, and started down the hall towards Sam’s room. Sam brought him to a halt with a tug at his wrist.

“No. I want to hear you say it. Where do you want to spend the night?”

Kimble swallowed. “With you, Sam,” he got out, in a monotone.

“Don’t lie to me, Richard. Don’t ever do that.” He unlocked the holding cell door. “Told you, you got a choice. In here, or in my bed, whichever you want.”

“You bought me to have sex with me,” Kimble said.

“Yes, I did.”

“How long are you going to keep me, if I always want to sleep in here?”

Sam pushed the door open, and gestured Kimble in. He wasn’t smiling. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”

. It was her last night. He was climbing the stairs to their bedroom, the rose petals on the stairs a spilled trail, her perfume a memory. At the top of the stairs, she would be gone.I’ll wait up for you. It was her last night.

That man took everything from me!

Fighting a man they said did not exist. We can't find the guy.

The police had called him “Doc”, over and over again, saying in hard voices, disbelief reeking off them, We can't find the guy. He heard them as he fought the man, heard himself shouting, his own voice echoing down the stairs, You find that man!

Then he seemed to have woken up and they were downstairs. He was standing between Sam’s legs, Sam’s hands on him, the roil of feelings inside him that the casual touch woke. “See if there’s anything I’ve missed. Come on, don’t be shy.”

At the top of the stairs, she was gone.

You find that man!

End - tbc

This concludes the first section of this story. The second section, "The Players", should begin tomorrow or Monday: Part one is finished, I'll post it as soon as I've finished part two.

The Games - Part Five

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:52:27 GMT

This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four. There is the beginnings of a cast photo list here.

This is part 5 of a six-episode Arc 1: the closing episode of Arc 1 will be posted whenever I get the first episode of Arc 2, "The Players", written. *plotz* I think there's going to be four Arcs, and Arc 2 is going to be about the same length as Arc 1, but I don't have a clear picture yet of how many episodes it's going to take to get me through the plot of Arcs 3 and 4. Also I have disturbing thoughts about doing Nanowrimo this year.

Part Five

Kimble swallowed. He wasn’t even particularly hungry. “I think you want to beat me up,” he said. “I’d rather get that over with.”

Sam stood still, looming over him, his face thoughtful. After a moment, almost absently, he turned briefly away from Kimble and switched the heat off under the two pans.

“They said you were a smart guy, Richard. What do you think, were they right?”

“I don’t know,” Kimble said. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“You just started something,” Sam reminded him.

“You could have asked me to watch the pans – turn the bacon, stir the potatoes. You handed me a knife. You were watching me to see what I’d do.”

“I figured I could handle a knife better than hot bacon fat,” Sam said. “So that’s what I gave you. If I’d let you use the pan, the hot fat would have gone on you or on me, and neither one of us would have got breakfast.”

“I didn’t use the knife.”

“I can beat you up,” Sam said, slowly, factually. “I will, if I have to. I still think I might have to.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Kimble said. “Okay.” He pushed himself to his feet, and stood there, facing Sam. They were the same height, he realised. “Okay.” He stood still, his hands out. Slaves were no more allowed to fight in the arena dorm than they were allowed to speak: he hadn’t been in so much as a scuffle for three years. “Please,” he said, after a pause of more than a minute, wondering whether Sam was waiting for him to ask, to apologise, to do something – “Please, just get it over with.” He closed his eyes again.

There was a long moment’s silence. Then some clicking of switches, and the bacon started to frizzle in the pan again. Kimble opened his eyes. Sam was standing over the two pans, watching them. He didn’t seem to be looking at Kimble, but almost at once, he said “Okay, Richard – toast.”

Kimble swallowed. On not quite steady feet, because he knew he had to, he walked over to his owner, picked up the slices of bread, and slid them under the grill. His hands shook, but he managed it.

“Check the fridge, see if Ray left any mushrooms.”

Still numb, Kimble walked from stove to fridge, opened the door, and stared, trying to focus. There was a carton on the third shelf with half a dozen mushrooms. “Yes, Sam.”

“Good. Bring them over here.”

Carton out of fridge, holding it in both hands, walking back towards his owner. Sam had picked up the vegetable knife again: the breadknife still lay where Kimble had set it down.

“Put the bread back in the bin.”

Kimble obeyed, and, still numb with obedience, came back to stand and watch the grill. He was within arm’s reach of his owner, but Sam was focussing on the pans on the stove. He said nothing. Kimble slid out the grill and turned the bread, and watched his owner.

Sam dished up breakfast for both of them, and poured more coffee. Kimble sat staring at the plate: tomatoes and mushrooms fried in bacon grease, crispy pieces of bacon, potatoes and onions, three pieces of wholemeal toast.

“Richard.”

Kimble looked up.

Sam gestured with his fork. “You don’t need to eat it all,” he said, “but I don’t want you just staring at your food, okay?”

Kimble nodded. He picked up the fork, and began to eat. A slice of tomato, a couple of mushrooms,a piece of bacon. The world had shrunk down to manageable proportions: somehow, he had to deal with the food on this plate. His face hurt, but he didn’t think about that.

After a while, his owner said “Richard,” again, and he looked up.

“You want ice for that?”

Kimble shook his head, not understanding the question, and went back to pushing the food on the plate about with the tines of the fork.

His owner stood up and walked away. Kimble moved the biggest pieces of leftover food under the third slice of toast. He had eaten most of one and half the other. The plate didn’t look empty, but it looked cleared.

His owner came back, and held out something that Kimble stared at without comprehension: he had finished with the food on the plate, more or less,and he could not think of anything more. Then Sam put it on to his face, and grabbed hold of the back of his neck when he jerked away from the icy touch.

Ice pack. Where Sam had punched his jaw hurt. You want ice for that? The question suddenly made sense.

“Just hold that there,” Sam said. He let go of the back of Kimble’s neck when Kimble’s hand came up to the pack, and, after a moment, began stacking the dishes on the table.

Make yourself useful. “I should do that,” Kimble said. He didn’t say it clearly, but Sam seemed to understand him.

“Sit there and keep that on your face.”

The scraps went into the bin – Sam glanced over at Kimble – and the dishes were stacked in a washer.

“We’ll go outside and walk around the house,” Sam said abruptly. “You’ll need a coat.” He glanced down. “And outdoor shoes.” Kimble left the ice pack on the table.

A door from the kitchen, unlocked, led into a concrete-floored blank-walled room with a washing machine, drying lines, and hooks for coats and an array of shoes and boots. Kimble’s feet were bigger than Sam’s, but Sam had a pair of hiking boots that fit Kimble more or less: the dark blue coat he handed Kimble was worn and shabby. Sam opened another door – double-locked with a security code – and gestured Kimble out ahead of him.

The sky was grey with unshed rain: the stone paving was wet. The air smelled wet. “It’s going to rain later,” Kimble said out loud. He was standing on a low stone platform, and beyond the stone paving was scrubby flat grass, and round the grass, a wall. Kimble breathed in fresh air, and turned, staring.

The house was made of stone, the windows – where there were windows – were shatterproof glass. It was bigger than he’d seen, downstairs and up.

“Okay,” Sam said. “See that wall?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s walk a bit closer.” Sam’s hand went round Kimble’s wrist: they stepped off the stone platform on to the grass. It was worn grey and shabby with autumn rain. It had been late winter last time Kimble had been outside, further outside than a prison exercise yard, nearly five years ago.

Sam’s hand round Kimble’s wrist was a solid hard grip. They had walked five steps on the grass when without warning he turned Kimble, snatching his wrist from one hand to the other, and his free hand caught at the collar round Kimble’s neck. That collar had been locked there when he was remanded to jail, welded on when he was sentenced. Kimble hardly thought about it any more. There was nothing to think about. Sam’s grip made the collar almost choking-tight. Kimble froze.

Sam was leaning close to his ear, and his voice was quiet, almost expressionless. “If a person wearing a convict collar gets within ten feet of that wall, an alarm goes off in three places: in my office, in the federal marshal’s office in Chicago, and in the local police station. That wall is wired, and if at any point a convict collar gets close enough to the wires to be activated by them, the metal of the collar starts heating up, and it keeps right on heating up until someone deactivates it. I am told it can get hot enough to burn your fucking head off, Richard, though naturally we’d deactivate it once you were dead.” He stopped. Kimble could hear his breathing in his ear. “Do you have any questions?”

They were standing, Kimble figured, about six yards from the wall. There was no mark on the grass. No warning. You knew, or you didn’t.

If not for Sam’s hand on his collar, Sam’s grip on his wrist, he could have run forward, head first, thrown himself at the wall.

“Do you have any questions, Richard?”

How long do you think it would take to kill me?

“No,” Kimble said.

“Okay.”

Sam didn’t let go of his collar. He stepped back, easing Kimble back with him, turning them both: Kimble didn’t fight him. When they were facing the house, Sam let go of his collar and transferred his grip on Kimble’s wrist from one hand to the other: he began to walk back across the grass. At the corner of the house, the stone became a gravelled path, and Sam walked them both on to it, keeping Kimble next to the house.

Once, the house had more windows: many of them on the ground floor were blocked. Workrooms, Sam had said.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” Kimble asked.

“What’s that?” Sam glanced at him. “Told you, I live alone. Have you seen anyone else?”

Kimble shook his head. If there was anyone in the workrooms, Sam wouldn’t tell him.

The wall ran all around the house: the same height all the way. The same security system. If it worked like the one on their town house, even the gate wouldn’t be a weak point. The same scrubby, autumn grass. Their feet made crunching noises on the gravel, loud in the silence: there was a faint noise of road traffic beyond the wall, but nothing else.

“The wires run through the gate,” Sam said. The front of the house was a gravel parking lot: there was a car, the four-door saloon, parked to one side. “They deactivate only when the gate is opened with a security code. If a convict collar passes the gate on the way out, they deactivate only with one of a specific set of security codes. My kids could bring you in, but they can’t take you out of here.”

Kimble didn’t look at the gate. He had a vague memory of it from yesterday: high and solid, not even as climbable as a wall. “Yes,” he said.

The gravel path ran on round the other side of the house. There were no windows at all on this side on the ground floor: two, small ones, high on the second floor. The wall was closer here. Sam’s grip on his wrist almost felt like a lifeline. What would it feel like to have the metal against his skin get hotter, hot enough to scald, to burn, to scar – burning through skin and flesh –

He didn’t want to know. But he could find out. And his life would come to an end, not quickly, but certainly. A slave could be damaged so badly it wasn’t worth expending anything to save the owner’s property.

He didn’t want to know. But, as they reached the back door, as Sam used his free hand to enter a code and open it again, Kimble thought he could feel the wall looming at their backs, almost as if it was looking at him, daring him to come to meet it.

“There are two doors to the outside,” Sam said, as Kimble was pulling off his boots. Sam had hung up both coats. “This one and the one at the front of the house. They need a key and a security code to open. Don’t try and get a hold of either one. I don’t want you going out of the house unaccompanied. Don’t bug my kids about it, either. If I’ve got time, I’ll take you out.”

Kimble looked up, saw Sam was looking at him, and nodded. He didn’t want to know.

“You want a fresh ice pack?”

Kimble touched the side of his jaw: it was still tender. He supposed he’d show a bruise. That wasn’t his problem. “Whatever you want, Sam,” he said.

Say as little as possible, don’t fight, don’t flinch, don’t die. Live.

If only he could remember why he wanted to.

to Part Six

Fortunately, I like writing

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:27:36 GMT

Via metafandom:

A Fandom of ONE is not fun. Nor is feeling like a fandom of ONE because everyone else in that fandom clearly does not view it anyway compatible with your views.

The fan who wrote that was born (from her livejournal) about the time I started to write - and the state she calls "Fandom Ennui" I think of as just normal state. It's really neat to be writing fanfic in a fandom where there's lots of activity, and especially if it happens that what I want to write falls into mainstream activity in that fandom.

But, from liking to write Spock/McCoy and Bodie/Cowley to writing RPF in the Keptverse... I just have a habit of not doing that. (The only time I was ever at Escapade, I wandered down the Trek stalls in the dealers' room asking each one "Got any Spock/McCoy"? and they looked at me like I was from a mirror universe.)

It isn't as much fun being a fandom of one. It is sometimes not fun at all being a fan banned from livejournal when no one wants to be fannish off livejournal. (Whine, whine, complain, complain, makes cup of tea, drinks tea, is good. British fans do have tea as a resource.)

But I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it. I like what I'm doing with "The Games": it has plot, it has plan, it has characters who are going to have a lot of fun with each other (for given values of "fun", of course) and best of all, it has me writing instead of procrastinating or reading blogs about the US election. I like writing. It is an intrinsically solitary activity. Sometimes fandom makes it feel less solitary. But mostly, it is an activity that makes me solitary even in a crowd of people I actually like, because when a story is going on well in the back of my head I'm (a) wanting to be somewhere with a keyboard and my characters (b) hearing my characters in the back of my head (c) wanting to tell other people what they're saying, and knowing perfectly well that this is a bad idea.

The only other fan who started writing a story that was about fictional characters got discouraged by poisontaster declaring that you can't play in her sandbox (ie, not post to her community - of course she's not ruling that fans can't take the shared universe and play with it) if it's not RPS. Which is her privilege: it's her community. But getting discouraged by that would mean (for me) that I was writing a story more because I wanted the feedback from the community than because I wanted to write the story. And a story that's worth writing at all is worth writing for itself. I wrote a 130 000 word novel about Hawkeye and Mulcahy and I think about a dozen people in total read it - but it was worth writing, no matter how few people ever want to read it.

(I'm sort of putting out feelers to see if anyone wants to set up an AU WWK community off LJ, by the way, if anyone who has an IJ account is interested.)

The Games - Part Four

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:05:37 GMT

This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. There is the beginnings of a cast photo list here.

By the way, poisontaster has now definitely communicated that if it's not RPS, it's not really part of the Keptverse, so, well. I suggested to the author of the other FPS story (who tried to post a link on the Keptverse community on Livejournal) that she and I could start an AU Keptverse community for FPS which are fanficcing on the Keptverse (kind of meta on meta) but haven't heard back. Will let you know. Let me know if you're interested, if I am speaking to anyone: it's kind of pointless starting a community for a fandom of one.

Part Four

Sam let Kimble use the bathroom on his own, though he wouldn’t let Kimble close the door. When Kimble had showered, there were three sets of clothing on the bed: shirts, pants, underwear, socks. “You can use these. Get dressed, sit down, got that?”

Kimble nodded. Sam didn’t close the door to the bathroom on himself, either.

The clock by the bed said it was a few minutes after shift change. In the long white room the survivors of yesterday’s Games were being examined to find if they were fit enough to walk into the arena and be killed.

He wasn’t there. There was a whole day ahead of him with no white room and no dorm. Just Sam. His owner.

I didn’t kill my wife. It had been stupid to say that to his owner. Say as little as possible, don’t die.

The shower stopped. Kimble was sitting on the edge of the bed, the two sets of clothing he wasn’t wearing on his knees. He was doing what he had been told, where he was supposed to be.

Sam didn’t even seem to look at him when he came out of the bathroom: he dressed himself rapidly and efficiently – has he ever had a body slave? Kimble had thought not last night, and then stopped thinking at all.

Make yourself useful. That had been an instruction from last night, too. He watched Sam dress – casual, today, jeans and a cotton shirt: yesterday he had been dressed more formally, suit and waistcoat and tie. Yesterday he had been working. Tomorrow he would be working. Watch him tomorrow, learn what kind of clothes he chose. Become a body slave. Be useful. Live.

It had been years since he had stopped thinking more than eight to sixteen hours ahead.

“Okay.” Sam turned round and looked at Kimble directly for the first time. “On your feet.” He reached out and caught hold of Kimble’s wrist. “Let’s go.”

“What do you want me to do with these?”

“We’ll put them in your room.”

The door with the lightswitch outside, the one that led to the cell Sam had called “his room” last night, was just down the hall. The room was exactly as bleak as it had looked last night: a mattress on the floor, a commode, a water tap with a drain below. There was nothing else. Kimble put the clothes in neat folded piles on the mattress.

“I’ll get you somewhere to store your clothes,” Sam said. He nodded, and took hold of Kimble’s wrist again, tugging him towards the door. Kimble went with him, glancing back only once. That was a holding cell. What was a holding cell like this doing in a private house? They’d had separate staff quarters with a lockdown in their town house, but that had been for privacy – theirs – and the staff had proper rooms, separate bathroom, locked away from the outside and the main house, not from each other –

It was a holding cell. The door locked from the outside. The rest didn’t matter.

Sam let go of Kimble in the kitchen, and pointed to the chair he’d sat in last night. Kimble sat down and watched, this time with intent to learn, as his owner took coffee out of the freezer and filled a coffee maker. He liked a strong filter brew.

“You drink coffee?”

“Yes, sir.” Kimble used the word deliberately.

“Call me Sam,” Sam said, almost absently. “I told you last night.” He poured two large mugs of coffee, sat down, pushing one across the table and lifting the other to his mouth. He sat looking at Kimble, and drank the coffee, and said nothing.

“You pulled a stupid stunt this morning,” Sam said at last. “I’m going to show you how stupid it was when we go round the house today. You cannot get out of here. If you could, you’re still wearing a convict collar – you always will – and no one would do anything but turn you in, if they didn’t kill you on sight.”

He waited, as if for Kimble to answer.

“Yes, Sam. It was stupid.” Not stupid but unanswerable: Kimble had no intention of telling his owner he’d meant to kill himself.

“Don’t bullshit me, Richard. I don’t need that.” Sam drank his coffee. “I didn’t buy you for that. I bought you for one reason only. I need to set some ground rules for you, and I mean to show you exactly how secure this place is, how you don’t stand a chance of getting out. This may look like less of a prison than where you were, and it is, but you’re still here for keeps. The only place you’re going from here is back there, got it?”

“I understand,” Kimble said.

“Yeah, you will. Okay. Ground rules.” Sam sat back, holding his coffee mug. “I don’t own any other slaves. But if you’ve got any ideas about how you’re going to valet me or bathe me, forget it.” His voice had a contemptuous roll on the words valet and bath: Kimble picked up the accent. Texan. “I don’t want that and you are just going to get me mad at you if you try. The housecleaning gets done once a week, and you will be locked in your room while the cleaning crew are here. They do laundry, but remember you won’t see anything you let them have for a week. The only people you get to talk to are myself and my kids – and you better not bug either them or me when we’re working. I’ll show you round when we’re done having breakfast, tell you where you can go in the house, and I expect you to remember. You can help yourself to anything much in the kitchen, there’s a board on the wall there to write down anything you use the last of. I get groceries delivered once a week. When we’re working here, someone usually brings pastries for breakfast. If you can cook, you can make yourself useful when the kids want something to eat, or brew coffee. I like to make my own meals and I didn’t buy you to cook for me.”

Why did you buy me? Kimble swallowed coffee, not tasting it: he was beginning to have a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“When I go out, unless one of my kids is in the house and willing to take that responsibility, you’re going to be locked in your room. I will give you a pager, if you’re locked in your room and you have some kind of emergency, you can use it. I think you’re bright enough to know what’s going to happen if you use it when there’s no kind of emergency.”

Sam turned his coffee mug in his hands. “This all sounds pretty regimented, but in point of fact, I don’t much care what you do during the day so long as you don’t give me any shit or pull any stunts on my kids.”

Why did you buy me? Kimble had finished the coffee in his mug. He still held it in his hands, looking across the table at his owner.

“I bought you because I want to have sex with you,” Sam said. He grinned, but without humour. “I didn’t know how this was going to work, and I still don’t, so don’t get the idea I have it all planned out for you. You say no, I’ll pay attention. You want to sleep in your room, you can – the door locks, you’ll be in there till I let you out the next morning, but I want to know that when you’re in my bed you had a choice to be somewhere else.” He paused. “Yeah, I know it’s not much of a choice, but it’s all you’ve got. Any questions?”

“Why did you buy me?”

Sam laughed. He said, sounding jovial, fake as hell, “Why, I saw you in a catalogue, Richard.” He tilted his head to one side, considering. “You haven’t asked what I do during the day – did you recognise this place?”

Kimble shook his head.

“Got no curiosity at all?”

“What do you do?” Kimble asked.

“I am a Deputy United States Marshal for Northern Illinois,” Sam said. He put his coffee mug down on the table. “If you were a runaway, it would be my kids who would find you, and we would deal with you here. You are not allowed in the workrooms or in the office. Not unless one of us takes you there, and you better pray that never happens.” He wasn’t smiling.

“Oh, Jesus,” Kimble said. He had that cold clench in his stomach, biting down. “You – interrogate them – ”

“My kids bring them in, and we find out how they got away, who helped them, who encouraged them, who spoke to them, who smiled at them.” Sam still wasn’t smiling. “We always find them, and there are always people who were dumb enough to try and help them. If you could get out of here, Richard, my kids would track you and they would find you. If it’s my say-so, you will be killed or you will be handed back to the arena, depending how vindictive you made me feel about you. If it’s not my say-so because you killed me, my kids… will do whatever they like with you.” He leaned forward, and his sudden smile was a gargoyle grin. “Don’t worry, Richard. I’m never going to let that happen.”

Kimble sat still. He knew better than to flinch back. Say as little as possible, don’t die, don’t fight, don’t flinch. Live. He nodded.

After a moment, Sam stood up. Kimble’s insides were one cold knot, but Sam turned away, towards the counter and the cookstove, and after a few minutes, Kimble realised: his owner was making breakfast. He sat still. His hands were shaking: he hid them under the table, clenched together, and looked down into the empty cup in front of him. He didn’t want to go to bed with Sam. He knew he didn’t have a choice.

“Richard.”

Kimble looked up. He hadn’t moved. Or done anything else. Two pans were on the stove, both sending off heady smells. Sam was slicing a couple of tomatoes.

“Make yourself useful. I want toast. There’s bread in that bin.”

Kimble stood up. Sam pointed. He was holding a knife: a short vegetable knife. On the counter beside where he was working, there was a breadboard and a breadknife.

“Yes, Sam,” Kimble said out loud, because he knew he should. He hadn’t seen where Sam had got either knife from.

“Three slices for me. Cut enough for yourself, too,” Sam said. He was frying potatoes and onions in one pan, bacon in the other.

Standing elbow to elbow with his owner, Kimble thought about using the breadknife: to stab Sam, hard, angle up under his ribs. To stab himself, in the throat, across the carotid arteries – not as quite as quick as bleeding to death from the femoral arteries, but just as likely to ensure no one could revive his owner’s property.

He glanced sideways at Sam: his owner seemed to be entirely focussed on the bacon he was frying. But after a moment, Sam looked back at him. He didn’t say anything, but Kimble was aware of Sam’s stance: light and poised on his feet, ready to move. Are you going to fight me, Richard?

Kimble shook his head. He went on cutting slices off the loaf. His insides still felt cold. If he had taken a swing at his owner – with the breadknife in his hand or without it –

Sam might not get a sexual kick out of it, but it looked very like he wanted to hurt Kimble – to know he’d beaten him.

If he stabbed his own throat, would Sam be able to stop him in time?

Surely there would be better chances. The one thing no owner would tolerate was a serious suicide attempt.

Kimble finished slicing the bread. He set the breadknife down, glancing at his owner, watching the dark head turn slightly to track the movement of hand and knife. He couldn’t convince himself that he could ever manage to use it on someone else – he wasn’t sure he could believe he would ever be able to use it on himself.

Sam reached to switch on the grill. Kimble jumped him, locking an arm round his neck and jerking him backwards, getting him offbalance for a triumphal moment when Kimble actually thought it might work, might not be just handing his owner an excuse –

They landed on the kitchen floor, Sam on top of him and not off balance: he turned like a cat and struck out at Kimble, one hard blow against his jaw that knocked him sideways. Sam was on top of him, his hands pinning Kimble’s arms and his weight holding Kimble down, a manoevre so like last night that Kimble nearly screamed.

“Jesus Christ, Richard! You couldn’t wait till we’d had breakfast?”

“You wanted me to do it,” Kimble said, too shaken to be anything but honest. “I saw you – you had it planned – ”

Sam laughed. It was sudden and genuine. He was still pinning Kimble down. He stopped himself almost as suddenly as he’d started. “Sure,” he said, “I want you to know you can try to fight me and you’ll always lose. I want you to know it, Richard, and quit fighting, because fighting me is not going to do you a bit of good.” The grin that twisted his face this time was jovially false. “But you could have waited till we’d had breakfast.” He stood up, letting go of Kimble and getting to his feet in one quick move.

Kimble lay still. His jaw hurt. Sam lifted his hand and flexed it, wincing. “So what’s it going to be, Richard? Breakfast or a fight?”

to Part Five

The Games: Part Three

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:34:15 GMT

This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One and Part Two. There is the beginnings of a cast photo list here.

Part 3

Sam set the glasses down on the table between them, and pushed the one with a single finger of bourbon in it towards Kimble. He lifted his own, and drank: Kimble took a cautious mouthful. The charcoal-molasses taste rolled back over his mouth before the burn hit his throat and filled his sinuses. This was stronger than anything he’d drunk in prison, stronger than anything he’d drunk in years. He hadn’t drunk anything in the arena. No one did, unless they’d made up their mind to die. Sam was cradling his own glass, three fingers full, between his hands and watching Kimble with a kind of appraising curiosity.

Kimble looked back at him for a moment, and dropped his eyes to the glass. He’s my owner. He wants me to drink it. I can’t get that drunk on this much bourbon. Even if I did… He looked up at Sam again. I’m his property. It’s not my problem. He raised the glass to his mouth, and took another sip.

The glasses were both empty. “We’re going to bed now,” Sam said. Kimble nodded. He didn’t think he was drunk. He didn’t think Sam was drunk. But when Sam put an arm around his shoulders and steered him upstairs, he knew he should be more afraid, but it all seemed far away, behind a fog of bourbon and tiredness.

“This is your room,” Sam said. He opened the door and they both went in: it was small and bare, a cell with mattress and commode, a small window high up on the wall, the light switch and the lock on the other side of the door. “You can sleep here whenever you want. But tonight, you’re with me.”

A couple of doors down the other side of the hall: a large comfortable room, with a big bed, a bathroom off it. Sam was showing him round like a guest: Kimble’s head seemed to click into focus. He hasn’t done this before. He was sure of it suddenly, that Sam had never before used a slave for sex, and that he could take control of the situation. The brief glimpse he’d had of Sam’s cock before when they were both pissing hadn’t looked impossible. Kimble turned, dropped to his knees, and put his hands to Sam’s groin, feeling for the zip, gently groping. Get Sam’s cock out, go down on it, get him hard… make him come if he could, but get him excited enough to come fast if not –

“Richard,” Sam said. The warning note was back in his voice. Kimble stilled. Glanced up. Sam’s face was unreadable, but he didn’t look pleased.

“Richard. On your feet. Get your clothes off.”

In the muddle of being shown round, Sam had pointed out a laundry basket. Sam was stripping himself, briskly and unerotically: Kimble thought he caught a glimpse of a holster as Sam pulled his shirt off, but if so, no gun. Kimble was jolted out of his brief moment of confidence: he took his clothes off quickly, trying not to look at Sam, trying not to think about it.

Sam took hold of him and put him down on the bed, lying on top of him, his hands pinning Kimble’s arms and his weight holding Kimble down. Kimble wasn’t hard: he could feel Sam’s erection pressing against his stomach. Sam’s face was close to his. “You can’t fight me,” Sam said, quietly. “There’s no point your fighting me. I’m not going to hurt you. We’re going to have sex, and then you can go to sleep.”

Without ever letting go of him, Sam turned him, quickly and with frightening efficiency: now they were lying with Sam’s front against his back, Sam’s cock hard against his ass, Sam’s arm solid across his chest just below his throat. Kimble grunted, all his muscles tense. He knew there was no point fighting this. He felt Sam’s hand at his groin – cradling his limp cock.

I can’t wasn’t something a slave could say Or please use lube. Being fucked without lube hurt, and meant bleeding for a couple of days afterwards. Kimble tried to relax, and got out “I could give you a blow-job.”

“Don’t want one right now,” Sam said. He sounded thoughtful. His hand went on moving, gently, on Kimble’s cock. He didn’t do anything else. “Spread your legs,” he added, after a moment, and as Kimble obeyed, he moved a little, sliding his erect cock between Kimble’s thighs, till the head was jostling Kimble’s balls. It was not what Kimble had expected. Sam’s hand was coaxing him to erection, skilled and inexorable. Kimble’s hands clenched together in front of him. “Let me – ” he said out loud: let me go, let me turn round, let me do something, let go of me.

“Shut up, Richard.” Sam’s voice was breathlessly harsh, close to Kimble’s ear. He was thrusting, and his arm clenched hard around Kimble’s chest, but his hand never stopped, and he got Kimble to come in a helpless pour of pleasure, before he jerked once and groaned in Kimble’s ear and flooded his own hand and Kimble’s groin with come.

“Now go to sleep,” Sam said, but Kimble was already drowning in darkness, still held, but unable to stay awake.

He was rolling down the stairs clutching a man whose prosthetic arm was hard against his chest. He was yelling “That man took everything from me!” He was shouting at police officers, with the hard authority of a wealthy man in his voice, not knowing how his life had changed, “You find that man!”

“We can't find the guy,” the police officers said, hard disbelief in their voices.

He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, someone he must not look at next to him. He could hear her voice and smell her, the faint familiar perfume. He was driving through the city’s night.

If he looked, she would be gone. It was her last night. I’ll wait up for you. It was their last night. Her voice, amused and lovely. I know you hate these things, but God, I love looking at you in a tux.

He was back on the stairs, throwing himself at the man, helplessly knowing in the dream that this was the worst thing he could do, knowing he should lock the house down, he should let the staff out of their locked quarters, he should stop the man getting out, he shouldn’t try to fight him –

You can’t fight me. There’s no point in fighting me.

The man’s arm, hard against his chest, and the two of them struggling as they rolled down the long flight of stairs.

Kimble woke, his heart hammering in his chest: he wasn’t in the arena dorm, he wasn’t in the cell: he wasn’t home, though for a horrible lurching long moment after waking he had thought he might be sleeping in the guest room.

Sam was holding him, still: but Sam was asleep. The clock on the bedside table said that it was almost half an hour to shift change: at the arena, he would have been getting up, showering, dressing in his work clothes, eating a food bar. The others in the dorm were doing that now. They weren’t allowed to talk to each other in the dorm, a rule enforced by gagging anyone who disobeyed and whoever was spoken to, but they would have noticed he was gone. They would assume he was dead, as Kimble had assumed others who vanished were dead.

He could be dead before shift change, if he tried. There must be knives in the kitchen downstairs sharp enough to cut through to the femoral artery, and then there would be no risk of being saved – he could bleed to death in less than half a minute. All he had to do was get out of bed without waking Sam, find the kitchen and the knives, and be a couple of minutes alone. Judging by last night, Sam had no intention of leaving him alone for even a few minutes.

The bed was warm and comfortable, aside from his owner’s arm over him. Sex last night there’s no point in fighting me might have left Kimble full of despair, but it hadn’t hurt – Sam had promised not to hurt him…

No. Sam had made clear he got no sexual charge out of causing pain. That was all.

That was all.

Kimble shifted himself cautiously out from under Sam’s arm: he lay on the edge of the bed as Sam rolled over with a sleepy grunt, but he didn’t seem to wake. Kimble sat up, slowly, cautiously, and moved his legs till he was sitting on the edge of the bed, and Sam didn’t stir or speak. Kimble counted, clenching himself, waiting for a minute, then two, then three, realising at last that he had to stand up and go or he never would.

The bedroom door was closed. The sound of the catch clicking open seemed noisy in the silent room, the silent house, but didn’t wake Sam. Kimble didn’t stop to close it. Walking quietly, slowly, he went downstairs, following the route he just remembered. The kitchen was dim and filled with the ghostly smells of yesterday’s food and coffee. There was no knife block: a magnetic strip above the counter had no knives. The obvious drawer held cutlery, with steak knives not quite sharp enough – Kimble tested one against his thumb, and set it down again. The bread knife might work, if there was one in the bin –

He hadn’t heard Sam follow him, but he was standing in the doorway, naked as Kimble, not armed. There was no bread knife in the bin. Before Kimble could reach the steak knife, Sam was there, gripping his arms. There was a moment when Kimble could have kicked him, could have struggled, and didn’t. He saw it pass in Sam’s eyes.

“Are you going to fight me, Richard?”

Kimble shook his head.

“I said last night there’s no point in fighting me. You know why?”

Kimble nodded.

“I don’t think you do. There is no point because you can’t win, and if you want to try, today’s your only day to try.” Sam let go of Kimble’s arms and stepped back. “Pick up that knife if you want to use it. I’ll take it away from you. I know you beat your wife to death, I know you shot her. I don’t intend to ever let you do that to me. But if you’re going to try and fight me, try it, Richard. Now.”

It was cold in the kitchen. They were both naked. Sam didn’t look defenseless; he was standing light on his feet, balanced, looking like a fighter, looking like an arena survivor. Even in the military Kimble had never felt like much of a fighter: he could not imagine, in cold blood, taking a swing at someone, trying to beat him – and to win against his owner, Kimble would have to beat him half to death, beat him unconscious, kill him. And what would he win, if he did that? The chance to find a knife, to kill himself.

Kimble went down slowly. The floor hurt his bare knees. He put his hands behind his back, and shook his head.

Sam didn’t move. “Say it, Richard. Yes or no. You going to fight me?”

“No.”

“You going to try a stunt like this again?”

“No.”

“I think you’re lying, Richard.” Sam didn’t even sound angry. “You pull any stunts on my kids, I will send you back. You pull these kind of stunts on me, I will have you locked up. I don’t want any shit from you, is that clear, Richard? Get up off your knees.”

Kimble got up. He felt dazed and cold.

“We’re going back upstairs to get dressed,” Sam said. “It’s too goddamn cold standing around here. Ground rules can wait till I’ve had coffee. Ground rule number one, Richard, I’m always in a fucking bad mood till I’ve had coffee. Go on. Get moving.”

“I didn’t kill my wife.”

Sam’s eyes glanced away from Kimble an instant, and he grinned a private, sarcastic smile, for that brief moment. His gaze fixed Kimble again. “I don’t care. Move.”

to part four

The Games: the cast list

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:24:00 GMT

Okay, who are all these people? Or at least, what do they look like?

Cast in order of appearance:

Richard Kimble

Sam Gerard

Willow Rosenberg

Benton Fraser

Ray Vecchio

I've never collected photos of characters/actors, so most of these are pretty crummy - just what I found on googlesearch. I'll add the others as we come to them...